Happy Valley Darjeeling (Organic)

Wow! I think you should call their helpline and do some screaming.

Their prices are far too high to let your FS points expire.

Yeah, it sucks because I was planning on stocking up on more Lemon Pound Cake since it’s pretty pricey but I did check the email they sent me in October and it did specify that they were going to expire on the 3rd. I thought they transferred over to the next period if you didn’t redeem them and only truly expired at the end of the year, though?

I did submit an inquiry about it just now, just out of curiosity. I reviewed the program stipulations, but it just seems odd how points themselves roll over to the next period (and ultimately expire at the end of the year) yet the rewards themselves do not. Doesn’t really make since.

Lollerskates, make sense, rather.

What? The points roll over to the next period, but then, all of it is gutted at year end to start again at zero?

Well, the end of the year is coming. In three weeks.

And they’ve now stipulated that if you have 100 points for one free bag, it can only be $19 or under, which eliminates the pure teas like Organic Ruby Oolong.

Yeah, points reset to 0 at the end of the calendar year. It’s just odd how points roll over from period to period but not actual rewards though. So, a person can earn 99 points in the 1st period which could roll over from period to period, until near the end of the year, yet, once you earn that one extra point, which would then get converted to a 50g reward, you absolutely have to redeem it within two months, and if not, you lose that reward (essentially 100 points) entirely.

They claim though that at least, since the beginning of this year, they have introduced a new policy that any leftover points at the end of the year will be converted to free cups of tea unlike before, but whatever.

In other works, it is ****ery.

How many free cups of tea? How does that work?

That about sums it up!

I have no idea. They’re very vague about it: “Effective February 24th, 2017, after we convert every 100-point increment into free tea rewards at the end of December, any leftover points will then be converted into free beverage rewards you can redeem in any DAVIDsTEA store. Your points balance will go back to zero and you’ll have 60 days to claim your rewards. So you can start sipping all over again!”

There rewards system sounds so ridiculous and half-***ed- like they just wanted to have one on paper without actual big rewards being redeemed for long time (although maybe irregular) customers.

Exactly, when they rolled out this new FS version, they lost me as a client. I used to shop there quite regularly. Though I did take advantage of their 40% off deal the other day. Even with 40% off, I would have been better off spending my money elsewhere in terms of value for dollar. And my points from that purchase apparently will expire in three weeks or turn into a free cup of tea—woohooo!

The whole thing just pisses me off.

And I don’t drink tea to be irritated by it.

Right? Half-assed rewards system for sure. I just dropped around $35 on teaware on the last day of their in-store 30% sale but do they really expect me to rush within the next twenty days to drop another $65 just to get 50g of free—yet otherwise overpriced—tea? No dice. Negative dice considering I lost 200 points for not making timely FS rewards redemption my #1 life priority.

Pretty much why they don’t even get me going in for 10g samples of their new teas….why risk loving something when it will be stupidly expensive and have stevia in it…not to mention that the times that’s ever happened are faaaaaaaaaaaaar and few between so they were getting my money to try mediocre teas.

By 10g samples you mean resulting-likely-intentional-overpouring-and-doubling-the-amount-you-asked-for, right? And bonus points for getting added snark from the sales associate for asking for that much (or “little”).

At least there seems to be a correlation between price hikes and stevia usage?

Yes! I stopped picking up small samples of new teas primarily because of the snark and resistance. I was going to buy +$50 worth of teas but now I’m just going to spend $10 on one tea, or nothing at all, thanks.

Stevia is my “hibby” or “blergamot” and I have not forgiven DT for adopting it as their new flagship ingredient. I feel very strongly about its infiltration into everything and I know if I ever accidentally buy something with it in it I’m going to go on a long, angry rant. :(

^^^What Sil said.

I used to go and pick up about 10 grams of each new tea that came out and then all this stevia and imitation flavour nonsense started and all their teas started tasting more or less the same and then the butchering of their FS system and nope, not doin’ it.

I just get swept up in a rant every single time I start thinking about the degeneration of DTs, from the time it was more or less reasonably priced for several reasonably good and fun teas with a reasonably good customer appreciation program.

Thankfully, I never had a problem with snark and resistance and upping my intended quantity. Generally, my servers have either been low-key indifferent or stellar.

I had someone flat out tell me they couldn’t sell me 10-15g once. It was around the time I had a friend who worked at another DT who sold me oodles of little samples, so I was more unimpressed than I normally would’ve been. XD

That’s rough when a sales associate is already resorting to lying. You have sales goals to tackle, cool, but these types of selling strategies hurt the business far more than they truly realize.

So, they ended up getting back to me and said that they would reimburse 100/200 of my points lost as “an exception” then passive-aggressively linked me to their FS program page to review the policies in spite of the fact that I referenced that very page in my inquiry and demonstrated my understanding of it very clearly. I just wanted an answer as to why they have structured it the way that they have. Sigh.

I’m jealous you got your hands on the Mother’s Day Sachets – we’re still waiting for them to be shipped to our store!

Oh wow! So far I’ve tried Lady Marmalade and its pretty good :)

LOL, don’t feel bad we’ve all had those moments. I personally have had several moments recently of LEGENDARY Laziness.

In my office, the floors are carpeted. Wheeling yourself over to a coworker’s desk actually takes more effort than standing up and walking over, at least IMO!

I can definitely see that – and the rest of the office is actually carpeted; but not the lab (where we were). Carpeting in a lab seems like an non-ideal situation.