"starbucks card" news and stories

Starbucks has made it super easy to buy your morning latte with just a swipe of your iPhone -- perhaps too easy.

The Starbucks Rewards Card iPhone app allows you to keep a scannable version of your card on your phone, giving early-adopter techno geeks yet another reason to smirk at the rest of us while we're fumbling for our (gasp!) credit cards. (Plastic is so 2009.)

But as The Consumerist reports, Starbucks has also unwittingly made it easy for someone else to scam your account.

It turns out that anyone with access to your phone can simply take a screen shot of your Starbucks' barcode and send it to their phone. Thus, anytime the criminally minded need a jolt of caffeine before their next caper, all they have to do is show the barista the barcode they scammed from you. (Get the whole story at Mobile Commerce Daily.)

Romenesko and Obscure Store and Reading Room proprietor Jim Romenesko tried to create one of those customized Starbucks cards on their web site, and it was rejected because it mentioned the StarbucksGossip site that he runs.

After submitting the card design, Romenesko got an e-mail saying that the card was rejected because it violated their personalization policy. He guesses that it was rejected because it mentioned the site on the card and Starbucks employees would check out the web site, which has insider-ish info about the site, sometimes from former and current employees. Commenters at the site seem to think it was because he mentioned the company on the card.