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Consumers holding Starbucks mooncake redemption vouchers in cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Chengdu and Wuhan report that local stores show no stock, customer service lines queue for long periods or disconnect, and staff say the whole city is out of stock. Vouchers cover a 6-piece box at 388 yuan and an 8-piece box at 438 yuan. Reservations ran from July 15 to September 16, 2024, with pickup from August 17 to September 17.

Starbucks has not issued a unified explanation, and the timing lands just before the Mid-Autumn Festival, when demand for gift boxes peaks. Complaints spread on social media under the mooncake voucher campaign, with some buyers calling the experience the worst part of the holiday. The case echoes other redemption programs, from limited seasonal drops to events like the Taiwan coffee festival, where supply planning has to match voucher volume.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is approaching, and mooncakes are the quintessential treat for reunion gatherings. Yet this year, many consumers holding Starbucks mooncake redemption vouchers are anything but happy. According to the rules printed on the vouchers, customers were supposed to scan a code to make a reservation and pick up two gift boxes in store, but in reality, nearby stores generally show no stock, customer service calls queue for a long time or are even disconnected by the system, and store staff admit that the entire city is out of stock. From Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai to Chengdu and Wuhan, feedback about being unable to redeem is popping up everywhere, and Starbucks has yet to give a unified explanation. This article will sort through the sequence of events, consumers' experiences and industry explanations, and include the latest alternative solutions in some regions.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is just around the corner, and on the night of the full moon, sitting together with family and friends to share mooncakes is an indispensable ritual for most people. But it is precisely this box of mooncakes that has plunged many Starbucks customers into a terrible mood over the past few days, with some even saying outright that the "experience was awful," and the root of the problem lies in Starbucks mooncake redemption vouchers.

Earlier, Starbucks launched mooncake gift box redemption vouchers that could be used in store to collect two gift boxes: the 6-piece "Star Feeling Mooncake Gift Box" and the 8-piece "Star Joy Mooncake Gift Box," with face values of 388 yuan and 438 yuan respectively.

According to the reservation and pickup rules printed on the back of the vouchers, the reservation period for this event was from July 15, 2024 to September 16, 2024, and consumers needed to scan the QR code on the back of the voucher with their mobile phone to complete the reservation registration. The pickup period was from August 17, 2024 to September 17, 2024, and customers could go to the reserved store on their chosen pickup date to collect the goods.

However, recently, a large number of netizens have complained on social media: "Starbucks mooncake vouchers are ridiculous," "probably the biggest IQ tax," "Avoid! Starbucks made my Mid-Autumn Festival unhappy," "Does Starbucks only sell vouchers for mooncakes?" These consumers holding mooncake vouchers are all stuck at the same step—being unable to turn the voucher into a physical product.

Many people hit a wall at the very first step of scanning the code to make a reservation. When they picked up their phones to scan the reservation code on the back of the voucher and planned to lock in mooncakes one day in advance, they found that nearby stores—even more than a dozen Starbucks stores within a ten-kilometer radius—all uniformly showed insufficient stock and were unavailable for pickup.

The voucher clearly states the reservation deadline in black and white. To keep the voucher from expiring and becoming useless, anxious customers turned to calling the 400 customer service number, only to find it completely unreachable. Some netizens reported that after the call connected, the system said there were more than 600 people ahead in the manual service queue. After waiting 40 to 50 minutes, there were still more than 200 people ahead, and then the system ended the queue—truly a mysterious customer service experience.

Other netizens said that after online reservations failed, they called nearby stores, and staff replied that the entire city had no stock and told customers to wait for follow-up solutions. This means that even if customers had already successfully reserved in the Starbucks system earlier and completed the online registration process, in the end they still could not get the mooncakes.

Sure enough, some people went to the stores and came away empty-handed, making Starbucks mooncake pickup a futile effort. It is understood that as of now, consumers in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, Chengdu, Wuhan in Hubei and other places have reported being unable to reserve and redeem their mooncake vouchers.

In response, some industry insiders pointed out that due to well-known reasons, overissuance of vouchers exists across the entire mooncake industry and is not unique to Starbucks, and this is not the first time Starbucks has been complained about over "no way to redeem mooncake vouchers." On search engines, under related keywords such as "Starbucks mooncake vouchers cannot be redeemed," multiple media outlets have reported on this in recent years.

A store employee kindly reminded that Starbucks mooncake vouchers follow this same routine every year, and if you really want mooncakes next year, be sure to reserve and pick them up early. Another employee said bluntly that they hoped consumers would directly call 12315 to complain, that employees simply did not want to sell them, that last time during the Dragon Boat Festival the zongzi could not be redeemed either, and that they did not want to sell these mooncake vouchers at all.

According to the latest feedback from netizens, Starbucks has now provided a solution in some regions: if customers want to exchange for mooncakes, they can, after registration, have them transferred from other stores, or directly exchange them for cups—6 mooncakes can be exchanged for a cup priced under 350 yuan, and 8 mooncakes for a cup priced under 450 yuan. Of course, consumers can also wait for the mooncakes to expire and then exchange them for coffee, though based on past experience, coffee exchanges are limited to the Frappuccino series such as lattes.

Regarding the inability to redeem mooncake vouchers, as of the time of publication, Starbucks has not yet issued a unified explanation or statement.

Image source: Internet

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.