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Comment by jonathanstark | Hacker News Reader

Jonathan here:

Yes, unfortunately I do get the rewards. I get a free coffee for every 15 purchased. I figured that the free coffees would accrue to the card itself and therefore every 16th person would get a free coffee. As it turns out, sbux mails free coffee coupons to me:

http://yfrog.com/keup3hxj

I'm not sure how to redistribute them fairly, but I was thinking that I could at least pass them out at my local store. However, doing so is expressly forbidden and my name is on the postcards.

Thoughts? j

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Keep the coupons? Seriously. I mean, you set this up, you have funded it, etc.

Also, Maybe a good idea to ensure auto-reload is not setup on the card! I dont know that it is, but if it is you could be out a significant amount of money. Looking at your API calls I dont see where it has been auto-reloaded.

This is a neat idea.

If you're willing to throw the dice a bit, and you wouldn't consider this a tainting factor (no sarcasm), contact Starbucks. There's a distinct possibility they may work with you. Depending on how you judge the risk, you may want to do this anyhow, lest they simply shut the card down entirely in the near future. There is of course the risk that contacting them may cause that result sooner, but... in the long term you're probably better off contacting them anyhow because if they're going to shut it down when you bring it to their attention, they're going to shut it down when they discover it anyhow. I think you still come out ahead in the case where you contact them and they end up not shutting it down when they would have if you didn't contact them.

Otherwise, you're "stuck"; be open about it (as you are), and use them or not. I wouldn't hold it against you either way, personally.

Good shout - and Starbucks know good press so they're likely to keep it open when they see how much attention this project's getting. It seems strange that they don't just give you the free ones direct to your card - I guess it's down to the psychology of receiving a free actual physical thing, rather than there just being a slightly longer delay between needing to top up your card.

Buy a homeless person a coffee this winter and have a chat with them.

Absolutely. If you like social experiments, I could think of few that had more potential for so little risk/outlay. You might get some truly fascinating stories that you could share on your blog, or you might hear one tiny nugget of information that would be worth your while. At the very least, you'd give a homeless person something truly worthwhile along with a welcome hot cup of coffee.

Use them to buy your own coffees and whenever you do, add the value of the coffee to the card?

Think of them as a reward for the work you put into this project. You deserve it.

A fair way to distribute them would be send them to those that chose to donate to the fund?

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