What a night it was last night as me, Ada, John, Miko and Gretch spent it having free latte from Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Eastwood City followed by watching the Daughtry concert in their central plaza then me and John finished with Vietnamese coffee from Pho Hoa.



CBTL Free Latte Experience

We arrived at CBTL feeling really excited about getting something free. Even if I had one the previous night, I still wanted another one. When we reached the counter we inquired if they still had free tea latte, unfortunately they only had Tropical Passion Latte and the girl said that they didn't have any cover for the cups anymore if we were to take it out. Well, if you look at it, it was fortunate for the others since that was their favorite. I wanted the Chai Tea Latte and I was really craving for it but having something free that was supposedly good, who would complain right? I used the words supposedly good because I thought it would taste good but it didn't. Our tea was watered down, it really tasted like water with a little tea and a little vanilla powder. So we complained and ask for a replacement and they did replace it.

If you're giving out free drinks to promote your product or for whatever marketing purpose, your drinks should be at par with what the actual drink taste like. Instead of leaving a positive mark to your new customer, you'd actually even drive them away. It was a good thing we love CBTL and we know how their teas and coffees tasted or else it would really turn us off. Anyone who actually tasted the tea we had last night would definitely complain because of its watered down taste.

Another is that by the looks of it they weren't able to anticipate the number of people who would actually get the free tea latte. I guess their process control wasn't that strict since anyone could actually just print the stub even if they didn't go to their website. I raise this up because the other night the CBTL in Greenbelt ran our of tea lattes and the one last night ran out of cover for their cups. We could have had ours in a mug but we had to go to the concert and were afraid if we had it there we might not be able to catch the start.

I guess this will be a lesson for CBTL and for those who would want to do a promotion similar to theirs. Just give the same quality in your product even if it's free. Your purpose is for them to try the real thing and purchase it the next time and not to turn them away with bad tasting teas or whatever it is you're trying to promote. Also be strict with your process control so as not to let people just print your promo stubs out without letting them enter your site. I am guilty of this but I am just assuming that they made a mistake here since some branches say that you have to have a colored printed stub. That makes me believe that they're trying to control people from just photocopying the printout.

Well, that was a fun two days with CBTL despite what happened. It is still free and they changed our drinks when we asked them too so it was all good. I am still a loyal customer and I am thinking of going back there today...hmm...On with the the Daughtry concert first..[To Be Continued]