Stick to a reward program

D and I love drinking from Boost Juice.

Unfortunately, after the kerfuffle involving their reward programs, I'm not sure if we'll be visiting again any time soon.

The management of Boost Juice just cannot seem to be able to decide on the reward program that they want, and constantly change it, much to the chagrin of their customers.

Reward program 1

A simple cardboard card and stamp system. You buy one drink, you get a stamp on the card. When you get ten stamps, you get a free drink.

That worked well until one day, without seemingly any forewarning, they moved on to Reward program 2.

This pretty much meant that any stamps that you might have accumulated prior to the move was null and void. Tough if you had nine stamps and was waiting for that one stamp to qualify for a free drink.

Boost Juice has moved on.

Reward program 2

A little key ring sized card that you show whenever you purchase a drink and you immediately get a 10% discount.

This worked well for a few months until suddenly, Boost Juice decided to move on yet again.

Suddenly customers are left hanging on to their now useless key ring decoration, and instead given a cardboard card that looked remarkably like that in Reward program 1, and worked suspiciously like it too.

Oh wait, the reward program has indeed changed back to the old buy one drink, get one stamp, collect 10 stamps, get a free drink system.

Woohoo.

And then on Monday, D and I were at Boost Juice again. As D was about to pay for the drink, he hands over his card, that already has eight stamps, thinking that he was two drinks closer to a free drink.

Surprise surprise.

Reward program 3 or is it 4, considering, there was a 3, but it just looked like 1.

The cashier explained, quite patiently and nicely, that Boost Juice has changed reward programs and no longer accept the cards. Instead, "here's a new plastic card that gives you so much more benefits".

I'm not sure what the benefits were, I tuned out by then.

She also very briskly made the cardboard card disappear (no, it wasn't returned to us, not even as a keepsake). It was as if she wanted to make sure the previous reward program never existed.

D looks at cashier with tears in his eyes, exclaiming, "Nooooooooooo! My free drink!!!!!!!"

Ok, he didn't do that, that was just for dramatic purposes. But I'm sure he thought it. I did.

So now, Boost Juice has moved on again. Frustrated by the fact that Boost Juice just cannot seem to make up their minds, D writes them:

Hi there,

I've been enjoying Boost juices and smoothies for a number of years now but have a little gripe with my visit to the Hornsby store today.

I'm not sure when I last got a Boost juice - possibly in November 2008, but I don't recall seeing any signs warning of the discontinuation of the Frequent stamp card, so it was a bit of a surprise when I presented my card today I was informed that the Frequent stamp card had been discontinued - the program where after each juice you buy you get a stamp on a little circular card, and then after 10 stamps you get a free juice.

The sales assistant explained it well, saying that a new program was starting and gave me the plastic eftpos type card, and gave me a discount of 45c on the original sized Janine's Favourite from $5.75 to $5.30 - however, I had 8 stamps in my card, and as I had not seen any warnings about the closing of this program, I was a little disappointed as in my mind I was 8/10ths of the way to a free juice, not a mere 8% discount. Anyhow - that's just my gripe of the day.

To their credit, a reply came rather quickly:

Thanks for your email.

We launched a new VIBE hard card on the 5th of November 2008, with the same benefits as the stamp card (buy 10 and get the 11th free). Customers were given until the 31st of December 2008 to use their stamp cards and this was communicated via flyers in-store, emails sent out to the Boost database and in the terms & conditions on the website.

Franchisees are not obligated to honour stamp cards after the 31st of December 2008 given the 2 month grace period awarded to customers. However, I do understand your frustration as I know you have collected a fair few stamps. If you post your stamp card to the following address as proof of this along with the details on your new hard card (Boostie number, verification code, full name, birthday and email address) I can certainly credit your hard card with the stamps on your old card so that you don’t lose out on the change in procedure.

Boost Juice Bars - Customer Relations Department (Stamp Card)
Level 1, 173 Burke Road, Glen Iris, VIC 3146

Please note that you will have to register your hard card as per instructions on the card before you are able to redeem your free drink, and that we will need 5 working days from when we receive your stamp card for the points to be credited. We cannot take any responsibility for missing stamp cards, so we strongly encourage you to use en express post or registered post envelope when sending this through.

Hope this helps, thanks and have a great weekend!

It all sounds nice and everything, until you consider.

1. D and I walked past the Boost Juice stall several times between November and 31 December. Not once did either of us see any "flyer or poster". Maybe we were blind and simply missed it. Perhaps.

2. Buying the stamps to send something via express or registered post will probably negate the cost of a free drink.

3. The lady at the Boost Juice place confiscated our stamp card!!!

Why, oh why, can't Boost Juice just make up their minds regarding a reward program?