John Lewis to withdraw complimentary coffee

One of the United Kingdom’s biggest department stores has dropped one of the more popular advantages associated to its membership card.

John Lewis, the retailer known for their ephemeral Christmas adverts, will no longer be giving out free teas, coffees and slices of cake to those who are signed up to their loyalty scheme – less than twelve months after they introduced it.

The new guidelines, which will be in place in the run up to the busy festive season, will see John Lewis’ members be rewarded with a free coffee and cake, but only if they meet certain criteria such as their shopping frequency, total spend and other monitored preferences.

Under the previous arrangement the 1 million or so people signed up to the my John Lewis programme would be able to get about $8 worth of free beverages a month from their in-house restaurants.

We wonder how Marie Antoinette would react to this news, let alone Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The company broke the news in a prepared statement, and has been met with a mixture of outrage and ridicule.

“As we approach our busy Christmas period, we will be reducing the number of hot drink and cake vouchers [that are] issued to customers,” the retailer said in a statement.

“All my John Lewis member rewards are continually reviewed and the rewards our members receive in the future do depend on a variety of factors.

“Our cafes and restaurants become extremely busy during this time,” they explained.

Perhaps the cynics might state that the restaurants sell themselves and there’s no need to drive in custom when people are flocking to their stores in the run up to Christmas.

The managing editor of the consumer help website Money Saving Expert, Guy Anker, claimed that: “There will be many disappointed loyal John Lewis customer. Our users have told us they feel let down that the offer’s been changed.”

This isn’t the first time that John Lewis’ group has been in the coffee news.

The retailer also owns Waitrose who made the press over their loyalty scheme which offered free drinks, and a couple of unsavoury instances involving inadvertently contaminating customers drinks.

By Mankind 2k [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons