Outage Strikes Starbucks Payment System
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – Starbucks is reportedly blaming a technology upgrade for a payment system outage at locations across the U.S. and Canada Tuesday morning.
Customers coast to coast took to social media to post pictures of locations that were closed, only accepting cash, or offering free coffee due to the outage.
The @Starbucks point of sale system is down so their staff is outside giving commuters free coffee. #customerservice pic.twitter.com/l1edFp4H8q
— Russell Scibetti (@rscibetti) May 16, 2017
After their computers crashed, some Starbucks began to give away free coffee (Daley Plaza). Then the crowds came. https://t.co/lDFU52H7jS pic.twitter.com/VkrRuMf4Vb
— CBS Chicago (@cbschicago) May 16, 2017
Uh-oh! Stopping by @Starbucks ? You may need cash to pay today! ☕️ @CBS4Local #goodmorning #coffeeisalwaysnewsworthy pic.twitter.com/CFgWK64bX4
— Daytime on KFOX14 (@DaytimeOnKFOX14) May 16, 2017
Company spokesperson Reggie Borges told Bloomberg that the technology update took place Tuesday morning. "When it was time to get them back up, some of them didn't take," he said.
Borges said a "limited number of locations" remained offline Tuesday morning, but did not give an exact number of stores that were impacted. There are about 14,000 Starbucks locations in the U.S. and Canada.
A similar outage impacted point of sale terminals at thousands of Starbucks locations in the U.S. and Canada in 2015.