Agreed. I'd also add that the UI for the app needs work. Ordering coffee for a group of people becomes a huge hassle on my phone because their search is not precise, and customizing drinks is a bit cumbersome.

I spent like 20 minutes trying to order 5 drinks the other day. It was also annoying because when I left the app, all my selected items disappeared.

I'd call that an app fail, taking more time to use the app than writing a list then walking there and back with your complete order.

I would not. Ordering a large group of people drinks from Starbucks is not in any way the primary use case for the application. For it's primary use cases (paying at the store, rewards redemption/collection, ordering yourself drinks ahead) it works perfectly.

Additionally, if you think about the feature set that would be required to facilitate bulk orders then you will quickly find that it would be quite large feature set and require it's own flow. The app does has new-ish features that allow you to re-order prior orders and save drinks, which would help for these bulk orders, so they are making progress. If you are consistently ordering drinks for a large group of your co-workers then you can save their drink preferences and boom.

Of course it's not the primary use case and the app guarantees it never will be. I can say from my experience that sending a gopher to get everyone coffee was a twice daily occurrence at our family business in NYC. Shave 5 minutes off that time and we would go to Starbucks instead of the deli.

I just wish I could customize the requests on breakfast items. I want no cheese on my sandwich. I can request it in person. Can't on the app.

Select the sandwich, tap on Sandwich Options, tap the google for No Cheese. You've been able to customize orders for as long as I've been using it to order stuff.

I have also had issues, except on Android. Admittedly, I am using a rather old smartphone now, a Note II, which my carrier has only allowed to update to Android 4.4.2.

Whenever I try to order something through the starbucks app, I have to try multiple times because at some point in the ordering process the message, "unfortunately starbucks has stopped," or something like that will pop up and the app will close. Usually no progress is saved. Often it will crash right as it is processing the payment, and when I open it back up I have to go to the order history to check to see if it went through. Usually if I make it that far before it crashes then my order will have been submitted successfully.

I would love to be able to skip the UI and just submit my order an alternate way, but maybe the answer is to just stop being so cheap and to get a new phone.

Here's a little story about how my gold card was disabled;

I was ordering coffee and my balance wasn't quite sufficient. I reloaded it via PayPal, but the balance didn't update so I tried again (it did error out). The app crashed, I reopened it and found it had added both transactions to my account. Open dispute on PayPal for just one of the transactions, got a refund but my card was completely locked out - $0 balance, couldn't reload it (the dispute was after I tried contacting support). So now I don't go to Starbucks.

Agreed. The app has definitely sent a different order than was on screen before; until recently it refused to work with Apple Pay unless your Apple Pay address matched character-for-character what your bank had on file (if one used # and one used APT, or one used VA and one used Virginia, it would fail), and we've lost the ability to customize orders as much as we used to (e.g. you can no longer order a flat white with chai unless it's saved as a previous order).

Was the card an Amex by chance? Visa and MC only use the numerical digits in address and the zip code for AVS checks.

Strange. I've never had a problem with it.

And yes, it makes the coffee taste better.