Hello kindly Starbucks Quality Control Masters and Mistresses.
Longtime Starbucks fan (broadway store, seattle, 1985-ish), first time complainer.
So look, here's my story: I was traveling from Vermont to Seattle (my home for 20 years, thank you very much), in September, when I had to change planes in the under-appreciated Detroit airport (which, by the way, has one of the coolest fountains anywhere). Realizing that meals are no longer served on airplanes, my wife and I rushed to the nearest Starbucks to buy a couple fine beverages and to grab some food for the trip to Seatac. After some hems and haws (and some furtive gawking at a woman with freakishly artificial looking breasts who was nearby) (sorry, but it's true), we settled (foodwise) on a couple of fancy ham and cheese sandwiches sold by your fine company, the kind that come on foccaccia bread or whatever.
To cut to the chase, we ate the first sandwich as we lifted off from Detroit, and it was tasty (albeit with kind of dry bread). A couple hours later we prepared to eat the second sandwich when lo and behold, before my wife could open the seal on the package, what should she discover but an insect running around there, INSIDE THE PACKAGING. It was not a cockroach (though it moved quickly), and not a fruit fly (though it had wings), and it seemed pretty desperate to get the heck out of there. We, on the other hand, were suddenly quite desperate not to eat our lovely sandwich. Have a look:
It should be clear that this bugger was inside the packaging (otherwise it would have flown away--into First Class or something).
I must say, bugs in my food is the last thing I expect from The Starbucks Experience, yes? (and just yesterday I heard that you have stopped selling molasses cookies??? The horror!). Are these truly such tough times for Starbucks that we must expect to see the closing of stores, the discontinuing of your finest cookie, and (gasp) the insectifying of your fine comestibles?
What say ye, oh Quality Merchants of Yesteryear? Is it time to refocus on food quality and insect eradication and maybe not so much on lifestyle branding and your own line of audio CDs? One wonders.
***
The response, from "Jessica F., Starbucks Customer Relations:Hello Rob,
Thank you for contacting Starbucks Coffee Company. We appreciate you taking the time to share with us your concerns regarding the sandwich that you purchased.
Starbucks is committed to providing our customers with the highest quality beverages and food, so we take any concerns about product quality very seriously. I would like to share your comments with the management team responsible for the store, as well as our Quality Assurance team, in order to address the issue properly, however I was unable to locate the store that you visited.
As a customer service gesture, I would like to send you a Starbucks Card with my apologies for your experience....
All in all, this is a fairly lackluster response to the concerns I had regarding my sandwich.
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