How to Obtain Free Unlimited iTunes By Admitting That You Have an Addiction and are a Total Fucking Yuppie About It

I spend what some might consider an shameful amount at Starbucks, and I'm fine with that.

In fact, as I am such a frequent customer, I've become quite brazen in my interactions with the store -- I think nothing of purchasing a beverage at one Starbucks and deciding, four blocks down the street and two Starbucks later, to enter another Starbucks* and add some milk, or use the bathroom.

*(This really only makes sense in Manhattan, with its walking culture coupled with a high Starbucks density. In fact, one of my little tricks is that, if I'm walking somewhere and want both a Starbucks egg sandwich and a drink, it's hard to carry both while eating the sandwich, so I'll buy the sandwich at one Starbucks, eat it over the next five blocks, and then duck into the next Starbucks for the drink. This, again, is a simple solution to a trivial life problem that applies only in Manhattan. I discovered on my last trip to Virginia that nearly all Starbucks have drive-throughs, so outside Manhattan I imagine you'd just order both at the same time and put the drink in your cup holder, and then attempt to eat your Reduced-Fat Turkey Bacon Breakfast Sandwich while piloting your SUV).

To continue -- I've even gone into one Starbucks to complain about a drink made at another Starbucks, and sure enough, the barista at the new Starbucks has uncomplainingly made me a replacement drink. (A note to "Mai" at the Grand Central Starbucks: "sub choco" is NOT the correct register code for a "one pump" mocha. "Sub," as in virtually any non-Naval context, means "substitute." A one-pump mocha is still a mocha, just somewhat less so. "Sub choco" means to substitute chocolate for espresso, resulting in a drink most of us call "chocolate milk," which was great when I was five, but, when administered to a twenty-eight year old woman in a hurry, prompts swearing on the S train and all the way uptown on the 1 train. Mai, you're like the bartender who assumes all your customers want to be served Shirley Temples. They do not).

In any case, I enjoy what some might call
"perfectly legal scams," which I've written about in the post what happens when math teachers read the fine print, in which I obtain both unlimited thank-you network points and unlimited free phone cards via a Victoria's Secret magazine-selling operation.

Starbucks currently has a promotion wherein purchasing a Starbucks card nets the buyer two free songs on iTunes. Now, logging into some website and entering some long code to redeem two free songs hardly seems worthwhile. But, see ... I know how much Starbucks I'm likely to consume over any future period. I don't mind paying for it in advance if I will consequently accrue a reasonable benefit.


"Why couldn't I just buy 100 one-dollar cards, then?" I asked the lady at the register.

"Well, it's a five dollar minimum per card," she said.

"Great," I replied. "I'll take ten."

Once the cards are purchased, one simply registers the cards on the Starbucks website (three at a time), receives an iTunes code for each card, and enters the codes into iTunes. iTunes will store the credits, to be redeemed anytime from now til February.

I have since completed this entire process ... er, more than once. I've decided that eight cards is really the maximum a person can buy without rudely holding up the whole line for an undue amount of time.

So, my next 60 iTunes songs are free. And all I had to do was to admit the fact that I'm totally going to spend $150 on Starbucks anyway.

I like to think that Starbucks' corporate offices know me, that they're watching me as a sort of archetype of the Thinking Caffeine Buyer. That everyone in the marketing department wears a little bracelet: "What Will Jen Do?"