Woman suing Starbucks, after discovering Ice in her Iced Coffee

[The Donald]

When I am president I will stop frivolous lawsuits.

[RW]

I think there is a legitimate complaint here.  I think people should know what they are buying and if their coffee comes in 10 fl.oz less than what is advertised, they should be made aware of this so they can make the appropriate decisions when making purchases.

What bothers me about this is, Starbucks is not advertising or offering "24 ounces of coffee, iced."  They are offering "iced coffee in a 24 ounce cup," and not even promising the cup will be full (although a reasonable fullness is implied.)



Anyone who has ever drunk iced coffee knows already that to ice 24 ounces of coffee you are going to need ICE, a fair amount of it depending on the starting temperature of the coffee.  



If you go to (let's say) a Carl's Jr. and order a large Coke, you may or may not know that their cup size will be 40 ounces.  But you WILL surely know that the cup will be about half full of ice cubes when they start pumping Coke into it...so there will be room for only SO MUCH Coke, and it sure as hell won't be forty ounces of Coke you get.  Forty ounces of BEVERAGE, yes.  Carl's even tells you in the [size=85]fine print[/size] that this drink will have 330 calories, and in the [size=50]even finer print[/size] that your drink will contain approximately 1/3 ice by volume and the nutritional value is calculated based on that.  



However, if you need the fine print to tell you what you already know...that it works this same way in every fast food restaurant in the land, there COULD be something odd about your cognitive skills.

Is that the case for Starbucks Iced Coffee?  Where is the fine print that says about half of it is going to be ice?

[Anonymous]

I think there is a legitimate complaint here.  I think people should know what they are buying and if their coffee comes in 10 fl.oz less than what is advertised, they should be made aware of this so they can make the appropriate decisions when making purchases.

That kind of thinking is why you see warning labels on toilet brushes that read "Not for Personal Hygiene".

 



Truth is, anyone that buys shit from Starbucks is a moron. Their iced coffees and fagachinos are full of sugary corn syrup and artificial flavoring. Starbucks should just list their cup sizes as small, med, large, etc. That way dipshit bitches like the plaintiff can get their overdose of caffeine and corn syrup without ever knowing how close they are to contracting diabetes.



Worrying this badly about how much syrup laden crap gets displaced by some ice cubes, means you're a fucking sow.

I like their hot chocolate.

[Anonymous]

===

However, if you need the fine print to tell you what you already know...that it works this same way in every fast food restaurant in the land, there COULD be something odd about your cognitive skills.

Is that the case for Starbucks Iced Coffee?  Where is the fine print that says about half of it is going to be ice?

In the material you posted elsewhere, you can learn that a 16 oz (Grande) serving of black coffee will deliver 330 mg of caffeine, whereas a 16 oz serving of iced coffee will only deliver 165 mg of caffeine.  With a bit of soul searching, you can probably formulate a hypothesis as to why this would be so.

[RW]

Because it contains ice.  I understand the drink contains ice.  I'm sure the person filing the suit knows an iced coffee contains ice.  The issue is how much less coffee comes with the drink because of the ice (10fl.oz less) and if consumers knew that, would they still purchase the drink for the amount charged.



For example: "Peaches, you love iced coffee so I'm going to sell you one advertised as 24fl.oz but you're only going to get 14fl.oz of actual fluid for $5.00." Would you still buy that drink at that price knowing you're losing 10fl.oz to ice?

[keeper]

I make my own ice coffee & iced tea. Yummy

[Anonymous]

Well, you have an odd semantic attachment to the idea that more coffee is needed.  The beverage I'd be buying is not coffee.  It's not even old stale coffee at room temperature, nor is it old coffee that's been chilled in the fridge.  If "coldness" were all that I wanted, I could easily do it that way.  



The fact is, to a coffee hound like me, the act of brewing the coffee wrests a lot of oils and bits of flavor from beans that have already been roasted to within an inch of their lives.  It takes a lot of brute force, sharp steel and heat to get a cup of coffee, and the "shelf life" of the brewed product is quite short.  Moreover, cooling that brew either by natural or artificial means does something unwholesome to it.  It no longer tastes fresh.



But pouring fresh hot coffee over ice (even though it does dilute the coffee) has the advantage of allowing you to drink the chilled coffee before the shelf life makes it taste stale.  It's a compromise.  For this reason, the ice simply doesn't trouble me.  It's part of the beverage, and necessary to it. And although this is a digression, there are at least two commonly known ways of making iced coffee (cold brewed and hot brewed) that yield a much stronger coffee so that the ice dilution is less noticeable.



However, to answer your question...no, I wouldn't pay Starbucks for iced coffee, nor any other kind, for reasons Renee already mentioned. But I would, and have, occasionally made iced coffee for myself.  



Here's a counter-question...what about iced tea?  Where is the LOLsuit over iced tea?

[RW]

The suit includes the iced teas.



Coffee making red herring aside, is it okay to "short" customers almost half a cup size of drink to ice without them knowing that's happening?

[Anonymous]

I think the coffee making argument is relevant to the LOLsuit arguments, hence not a red herring.



As to "without them knowing," I think I'm with Renee on that.  Since you've mentioned being interested in the history and philosophy of law, I'll just mention that Caveat Emptor is a foundational common-law doctrine.

[Renee]

The suit includes the iced teas.



Coffee making red herring aside, is it okay to "short" customers almost half a cup size of drink to ice without them knowing that's happening?

To answer your question.....yes it is.



Starbucks does not lie to the consumer; they do not hide the fact that ice is part of their ICED drinks. An educated consumer knows this and understands it. Once again we are back to how much personal responsibility is the consumer supposed to have when they make a decision to purchase Starbucks overpriced beverages. If it were up to you and people like you the consumer would be held blameless for the stupid decisions they make.



You and the piece of shit bringing the lawsuit are laboring under the idea that a 10 ounce cup holds 10 ounces of liquid and indeed it does IF there is nothing else other than liquid in said cup. But in this case, common sense dictates that ice, in an iced drink will displace a certain amount of liquid in the cup. You don't have to be a physics major to figure that out. All you need is an IQ somewhat higher than a white lab mouse.



As Starbucks has stated.....if the consumer is unhappy with their drink, they will happily rectify the situation. The consumer is perfectly within their rights to ask questions about the product before purchase and the consumer has every right to request less ice or NO ice at all.



This is a case of some lazy, stupid, cow who hasn't got the mental wherewithal to do her due diligence and become an educated consumer..........So what does she do?.........She does what every sleazy money grubbing scumbag does.....She runs to a bottom feeding attorney and files a frivolous lawsuit because she got short changed 2 dollars worth of fucking swill.



I can't believe you are taking the plaintiffs side on this. As previously stated, it's thinking like this that has created the litigious society we live in today. And frankly......it needs to end. Telling this Starbucks addict blow-pig to go shit in her hat would be a great start.

[RW]

All I'm doing is presenting the other side of the legal coin for the purposes of discussion.  There is a legal principle at play here which is entrenched in consumer protection.

[Anonymous]

You and the piece of shit bringing the lawsuit are laboring under the idea that a 10 ounce cup holds 10 ounces of liquid and indeed it does IF there is nothing else other than liquid in said cup. But in this case, common sense dictates that ice, in an iced drink will displace a certain amount of liquid in the cup. You don't have to be a physics major to figure that out. All you need is an IQ somewhat higher than a white lab mouse.



I can't believe you are taking the plaintiffs side on this. As previously stated, it's thinking like this that has created the litigious society we live in today. And frankly......it needs to end. Telling this Starbucks addict blow-pig to go shit in her hat would be a great start.

This, exactly.

[RW]

I agree about litigiousness.  Some countries have consumer protection agencies that can assess and enact changes where need be without the need for legal proceedings.  If Crow was here he could tell you all about how they work as I believe Australia has a pretty good system.



I believe we have consumer protection legislation but I can be arsed to go look it up.

[Anonymous]

All I'm doing is presenting the other side of the legal coin for the purposes of discussion.  There is a legal principle at play here which is entrenched in consumer protection.

Please put this legal principle into words, if you will.



It troubles me to hear people speak of anything that is "entrenched" in consumer protection, because consumer protection is quite a new addition to jurisprudence and very little of consumer protection is really what I consider settled law.



Why not?  Because we are playing here in the valley between Roman law and English law, or if you prefer...civil law vs. common law.  Slippery slopes abound.

[Renee]

All I'm doing is presenting the other side of the legal coin for the purposes of discussion.  There is a legal principle at play here which is entrenched in consumer protection.

The only thing that is entrenched here is the entrenched abuse of our legal system that has been steadily escalating for the last 40 years.