IDG Contributor Network: Starbucks burned by aggressive pricing automation

When Starbucks announced this month that its software had rolled out a price increase weeks before it was supposed to, it exposed how easily such a mistake can happen. That's a critical lesson for all of retail.

Let's start with how Starbucks described this incident. "On July 12, Starbucks is planning a small price increase on select beverages. Unfortunately, that price adjustment was prematurely entered into the point of sale systems in our U.S. company-operated stores. As a result, some customers were charged incorrectly. The maximum any customer could have been overcharged is 30 cents per beverage," Starbucks said. "The error has been corrected and we sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience. If a customer believes this mistake impacted the price of their beverage, we encourage them to please contact Starbucks Customer Service at 1-800-782-7282, and we will gladly make this right."

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