February 28, 2011 Starbucks Customer Relations
PO Box 3717
Seattle, WA 98124
Dear Starbucks Customer Relations:
I am not a coffee drinker; but my wife is.
So she was pretty excited eighteen months ago, when our family moved to Hong Kong. She decided that she was going to collect commemorative ceramic Starbucks mugs from each country and city we visited.
We got off to great start with mugs from Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China, Singapore, and The Philippines.
But then we hit a snag. In the several cities we went to, the Starbucks were out of the collectable ceramic mugs.
We came up empty in Seoul, Korea. In Thailand, we struck out in both Bangkok and Chang Mai.
Offering commemorative mugs that can only be purchased in those cities is really a great concept. Collecting them builds brand loyalty and they provide free advertising when we display our collections in our homes. Also, the process of acquiring them is just a lot of fun. It’s kind of a world-wide scavenger hunt for adults.
But it backfires when so many of your outlets are consistently out of the mugs. Few things are more frustrating than zipping around Bangkok ducking into one Starbucks after another, only to find that none of them have in stock either the Bangkok or the Thailand mug.
Argh.
Our two years in South East Asia is quickly wrapping up and we will be moving back to our life in Chicago. We have a lot of great memories of our times in Asia. It’s just too bad that we will only be bringing back commemorative mugs from Starbucks from half of the cities and countries we visited.
Faithfully yours,Jack VanNoord
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