Absurd “free drinks for one year” claim leads to Starbucks Korea legal defeat

Posted on : 2017-05-29 16:58 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Case is part of a trend of consumers thinking they’ve won a prize, and companies later backpedalling
Starbucks Coffee Korea
Starbucks Coffee Korea

Starbucks Coffee Korea lost a suit filed by a customer who was given just one free beverage after being selected in an event purportedly offering free drinks for one year.

The customer, identified as “K,” entered an event on Starbucks website last December offering a coupon for free beverages every day for a year to 100 randomly selected people for posting a “special story” on their bulletin board and sharing it over social media. K’s was one of the names drawn - but Starbucks offered only a single free drink coupon, claiming there had been a mistake in the event announcement. When K protested, Starbucks reportedly offered to give five free drink coupons and deleted the reference to “one year” from its website. K demanded that Starbucks publicly admit the mistake and apologize for altering its web page. When no apology was made, K decided to file suit claiming damages.

The case is just one of many incidents of companies and stores defrauding customers with giveaway events. Some involve an event being held and the winners being denied promised items, as in the Starbucks case. But others employ even more malicious tactics, such as falsely claiming a person had won an event and sending an item, only to then demand payment for it.

According to data on May 28 from the Korea Consumer Agency, a total of 2,299 customers (1,348 in 2015 and 951 in 2016) received counseling in connection with telephone drawing schemes from the 1372 Consumer Counseling Center in the two-year period from 2015 to 2016. Drawing schemes are a tactic in which random people are contacted by telephone and told they have won a draw. After they have confirmed their personal details, a book or tape is set to their address, after which payment is demanded.

Customer counseling cases related to giveaways also rose from six in 2014 and nine in 2015 to 17 in 2016. One South Gyeongsang Province resident in his twenties was drawn in a company event purportedly offering a smartphone at a motor show in June 2014. When he actually received the prize, it turned out to be a supplementary battery rather than a smartphone. When he protested, the company claimed that it was “out of smartphones.”

There are also issues with how companies have responded to the giveaway competition. In particular, there are often lawsuits over giveaways due to misunderstandings between the customer and company when a mistake has occurred, and to companies using customers’ emotions to generate more business.

In many cases involving giveaway conflicts, customers want the company to make a formal apology and offer compensation, while the company responds by claiming the mistake was due to “worker error” and offering conditions the customer does not accept. Customers are provoked into legal action when they are dismissed as “bad consumers” or, as in the Starbucks case, when the details of the event are altered.

By Kim So-youn, staff reporter

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