Starbucks is facing a $114m (£63m) lawsuit after a
customer objected to the company withdrawing a free coffee offer
sent by e-mail.
A woman in New York went to law after she was refused a free
drink at Starbucks.
The amount claimed in the lawsuit is based on the estimated
number of people who could have been turned away by Starbucks after
it pulled the offer.
The café chain says it ended the offer after the e-mail had been
redistributed beyond its original intent - which could be seen as
naïve.
Starbucks originally e-mailed the offer to employees in the
south-east of the USA, and included instructions to forward it to
family and friends.
However, the offer has been forwarded across the country and has
even been posted on websites.
The woman’s lawyer is seeking to get class-action status for his
client’s lawsuit and is inviting thousands of others who were
turned away by Starbucks to join the action.
Simon Ratcliffe, who heads up the managed services practice of
the Business Systems Group, said of the case, “There are some key
lessons to be learnt. E-mail is still largely a black hole when it
comes to best practice. Printed documents, marketing literature and
reports will go through a series of checks, but e-mail will often
leave an organisation after the most cursory scrutiny with a
perfunctory disclaimer.
“This is symptomatic of a lack of strategic thinking when it
comes to e-mail and messaging – how you terminate an offer is just
as important as how you launch it, but of course e-mails and
websites rarely die. You need to adapt the offer.”
Ratcliffe said firms wanting to use e-mail in marketing should
employ tools to limit the forwarding of messages, or digital rights
management technology could be used to control their use.
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