By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Posted on 09/25/2001 8:02:00 AM PDT by toupsie
Starbucks dropped the ball in New York
Tuesday, September 25, 2001
By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
For Starbucks coffee mogul Howard Schultz, the terrorist attacks in New York City hit home.
Schultz was born in Brooklyn. He lived in or near the Big Apple for more than two decades. He has opened more than 130 Starbucks stores in Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs, each one serving up java -- along with the company's hallmark customer service.
So how then to explain what happened to the Midwood Ambulance Service, a company based near Schultz's old Brooklyn stomping grounds?
On Sept. 11, after the horrific collapse of the World Trade Center, workers for the ambulance company rushed to get bottled water for patients.
They went to a Starbucks store near "Ground Zero" and got, well, let's allow the ambulance company to spill the beans:
"A great deal of people were in shock from the devastation," a representative of the family-owned ambulance company wrote in an e-mail to Starbucks. "Shock victims are supposed to drink a lot of water. When employees of Midwood Ambulance went to the Starbucks down the street to get bottles of water for the victims they were treating, can you believe Starbucks actually charged them for it!!!"
Wait, there's more...
"These men, heroes for what they were doing, paid the $130 for three cases of bottled water out of their own pockets. Now, I would think that in a crisis such as this, vendors in the area would be more than happy to lend a little help by donating water. Well, not Starbucks! As if this country hasn't given you people enough money already!"
The e-mail continued:
"I love Frappuccinos as much as anyone, but any company that would try to make a profit off of a crisis like this doesn't deserve the American public's hard-earned money."
Now, let's give Starbucks the benefit of the doubt.
Let's pretend for a moment that employees at the store in Battery Park were not motivated by callousness when they charged medical personnel for water in a time of need.
Still, the store's unwillingness to donate water -- when many other people in New York and elsewhere freely gave supplies and labor -- came at the very same time when its corporate parent was all too willing to do something else: pat itself publicly on the back.
In a press release, the Seattle-based coffee company publicized how it had temporarily closed its North American locations "so that our partners could return to be home with their families and friends."
Gee, what Starbucks did for its "partners" -- that's Starbucks-ese for employees -- was nice, but certainly not something worthy of tooting its own horn about.
Given the context of national suffering, such publicity came across as self-serving and something else: tasteless.
If the mistreatment of the ambulance company resulted from one ill-guided employee at one Starbucks store, then the coffee giant, which fancies itself a good business neighbor, failed to do the right thing when the issue first reached the corporate level.
Starbucks could have made nice when a representative from the ambulance company called up to complain about the H{-2}0 imbroglio. But that didn't happen.
The ambulance company employee told Starbucks, "When I called...to inquire about this at your 'contact us' phone number from your Web site, I was told in a rather rude way that this could not have happened and abruptly thanked for my call and dismissed."
Starbucks had the chance to turn this unfortunate incident into something positive and, it appears, shrugged it off.
So the ambulance company eventually went to a higher level, writing a Dear Orin letter -- as in Starbucks President and CEO Orin Smith. That correspondence, dated Sept. 17, began: "Dear Orin, I have been a good customer of Starbucks for a number of years..."
It went on to explain what had happened and expressed how the ambulance company felt: "I am completely and utterly disappointed in you and your company and would sooner have open heart surgery without anesthesia before I would give you another red cent of my hard-earned money."
Neither Schultz, who is Starbucks chairman and chief global strategist, nor Smith could be reached. Audrey Lincoff, a company spokeswoman, confirmed that Starbucks had talked to Midwood Ambulance Service and had received its correspondences.
Finally, last week, Smith spoke to the head of the ambulance company and expressed "his deep concern" over the incident, the coffee company said.
Starbucks is now looking into how the faux pas occurred.
But the coffee company has made amends, swallowing its pride and doing something to make up for the case of customer disservice: It reimbursed the ambulance company in Brooklyn.
P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. can be reached at 206-448-8125 or robertjamieson@seattlepi.com
My sentiments EXACTLY!
I think the article said it was a private ambulance company and a city ambulance is required to charge...a private company is much more likely to let it go, especially in with the magnitude of this crisis and in the light that SO MANY services are giving away their time, etc., as did many restuarants and stores, gyms, etc. in order to help victims and rescue workers. Greed doesn't motivate rescue workers to go into the death trap they faced that day...not even overtime pay.
Quite easy, and I like the way it may be aried. I see HLL's calls for dipping white choc; I've done this with the ones that have cocoa added, also have dipped th4e plain in semi-sweet. I prefer the anise, over all the rest; in fact, I've been known to add a few extra anise seeds.
I agree with you but I don't have the confidence that Starbucks will get that message across based on their poor follow up response or lack thereof. They didn't respond anywhere even close to appropriately until their backs started getting pushed up against the wall, which made them close enough to actually see the handwriting on that wall.
De gustibus non disputandam, but I cannot fully agree. There is no question that top quality Kona is one of the finest coffees in the world, but there are others. Jamaica Blue Mountain, estate grown, my preference, is generally regarded in the coffee trade and among serious gourmets as the pinnacle of coffee perfection. Unfortunately, it is available in very limited quantities.
But truly, this is like a debate between the relative merits of the various wines of Domaine Romanee Conte in Burgundy or between Chateau Lafitte and Chateau Latour in Bordeaux.
I was at a college football game a couple of weeks ago and a kid peddling bottled water (who no doubt sells the same thing all day long) had to get out a calculator to figure the change due a man who paid for a $2.50 bottle of water with a $10 bill. The kid was easily old enough to be a junior or senior in high school.
Yes, primarily b/c of the triple murder at the Starbuck's in Georgetown (DC).
Yes, I agree....other companies will have no problem picking up where Starbucks leaves off if we were to be so fortunate enough to have them eat crow. Only thing is with just one article and just this thread here I doubt many Americans will even be aware of the incident, unless folks start emailing it around the internet. Then even if they check with the urban legends page they would find out it were TRUE. Yes, may capitalism do it's work!
C|N>K
You owe me a keyboard! :-)
All the accusations that the "manager" of the store was at fault, or that this is a sign of "greed" at the corporate level, are unsupportable from the information presented in this article.
No store manager was mentioned -- he may not even have been on the scene, maybe he was out on the street trying to help in the chaos. And when the corporate-level people finally heard of this, they reimbursed the rescue workers.
To me it looks like all that happened was a minimum-wage drone at the store didn't think it was their place to start handing out store merchandise for free. The fact that the emergency should override such considerations was a matter of stupidity, *not* greed. For that matter, maybe the store clerk wasn't aware of the magnitude of the disaster at that point in time, and maybe the rescue workers didn't make clear enough how vital the water was and how scarce other sources of water were due to the size of the disaster.
I don't see how anyone can inflate the bone-headed decision of one clerk as any sort of proof of "corporate greed".
As for the customer rep on the phone, I'm sure it *did* sound unbelievable to hear someone call up and tell a tale of being charged for water during the emergency. That's not to say they shouldn't have taken it more seriously anyway, but incredulity is not the same thing as corporate greed. Plus, given the quotes from the aggrieved rescue worker, it sounds pretty likely that instead of just calling the customer support line and describing what happened, they probably went off on a rant about "profiting from a crisis" and "don't deserve America's heard-earned money", and "would rather have open-heart surgery", etc. That sort of stuff tends to drop a caller's credibility rating about 30 points.
For that matter, I'd like some verification of this story myself. It sounds like the sort of email someone would create if they wanted to give a company a black eye, even if nothing of the sort had happened at all.
I've never been into a Starbucks, however I have purchased their coffee beans from the grocery store. I will not do that again!
Everyone, please forward this thread link to all your e-mail lists, now!
WHOA!!!
Where are you getting this from? Nowhere in the story does it say that the ambulance company was "not getting any responses from upper management".
Read the article again.
What it's saying is that the *columnist* couldn't reach the upper management for comment. That hardly surprises me, they're probably swamped right now.
But the ambulance company *DID* get a prompt response, as is clear if you read the article.
The article says that the ambulance company wrote to upper management on "September 17". The article also says that the ambulance company got a response and was reimbursed "last week". The article is dated the 25th. "Last week" would have been the week of Sept 17-21. This shows clearly that the ambulance company was reimbursed within a matter of DAYS (and part of that may have been time when the letter was in transit).
*NOWHERE* in the article can you find support for the claim that the ambulance company's complaint was ignored by upper management, or that they dragged their feet. When they finally did reimburse the ambulance company worker for the money spent on the water I think it had more to do with doing what they had to do when they saw the handwriting on the wall.
How do you make it thru life? Drinking good coffee in the morning is something I always look forward to. And it has to be a lot of coffee. Last Sunday I was only able to drink a small cup in the morning and I ended up feeling like hell for the rest of the day.
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