Is Starbucks over-charging their coffee-drinking customers?

Grabbing a quick coffee and pinging the payment on to your card might seem like the quickest thing in the world.

This convenience is causing a storm in a cardboard cup as these surprise charges have sent some people’s bank accounts into the red.

One man has had a shock coffee charge of more than £700 leave his bank account.

They might be really eager to know your name when you’re ordering a banana caramel s'mores frappuccino, but if it comes to complaining, some people are hearing... not a bean!

Secretive Starbucks won’t even tell us exactly what’s happened, or pinpoint the exact branches where people have suffered the extra costs. But it has told Watchdog Wednesday what to do if these surprise charges hit you too (ours is espresso doppio con panna, thanks).

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Who’s affected?

Angry customers have taken to Facebook and email to complain, some of them letting off enough steam to froth a... never mind.

Fleur Campbell, who might have had the odd coffee in the Basildon branch, checked her banking app one morning after a payment had been unexpectedly refused. She found that almost £27 had been taken by Starbucks in four different payments – all at the same time.

Almost as mysterious as the ‘pink drink’ that sent Instagram into a frenzy last week.

Fleur can’t remember when she last had a takeaway coffee - she thinks maybe in January - so was worried to see the cash leave her account.

She says the bank told her she wasn’t the only one, but there was nothing they could do. So Fleur emailed Starbucks her bank screenshot (on June 10th) and asked them what’s going on. She’s yet to hear anything back.

Alex Thompson, who isn’t really a regular coffee drinker, thinks that Starbucks might be getting a bit too over-caffeinated with her account.

Payments of £5.64 were taken on April 1st and May 1st from Alex’s bank account. Her email got no reply, so Alex venti-ed on Facebook and has so far got one of the charges refunded.

People who’ve been to the branch in Saffron Walden are also getting slapped with some massive mystery charges. The local paper is covering the issue and one of the cases they’re reporting is that of Helio Flores. Helio lives over the road from the coffee shop and told the paper he had £712 was taken from his account in delayed charges dating back two months. He said that he does not dispute he spent the money as he visits the coffee shop more than seven times a week but he is angry the money was taken all at once.

He said: “Little by little you don’t notice it, but it one big go, it’s too much. I’m angry with the company, and I’m angry that they left the poor staff in the shop to have to take the brunt of it. It isn’t the staff’s fault. I would urge people not to take it out on the staff but go through the proper channels to make a complaint.”

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What does Starbucks say?

Starbucks still won’t say what’s happened or confirm exactly which branches are affected.

They did confirm two separate faults to Watchdog, one they describe as "a delayed transaction issue caused by a technical fault."

The other, they said, was isolated to a small number of their UK stores, and caused some customers using debit or credit cards to be charged twice.

Starbucks has apologised and said: “This fault has been identified and fixed by our payments provider and those customers will be automatically refunded.”

We asked if Alex and Fleur could have a refund now, but Starbucks refused to comment on specific cases.

Starbucks did confirm that anyone who thinks they’ve been affected by this should contact their customer care team at customerfirst@starbucks.com.

Watchdog and BBC Three are working together. If you have a story about a scam or any other rip off you'd like to shout about, you can contact the producers at Watchdog directly on watchdog@bbc.co.uk and put 'BBC Three' in the subject heading.

This article was first published on Wednesday June 15th, 2016