Tassimo Buyers Frothing Mad at Starbucks

Okemos, MIWhat did Starbucks know and when did they know it? Starbucks has dropped its Tassimo coffee maker deal with Kraft Foods and switched over to the Keurig single-cup system, leaving hundreds of thousands of Tassimo owners with a machine that will no longer work with Starbucks single-serve coffee cups. Consumers are crying fraud!

Most, if not all, Tassimo owners bought their Starbucks-endorsed machines specifically so they could use Starbucks coffee, says attorney Tim McCarthy, from McCarthy Law Group in Michigan, which is representing plaintiffs in a consumer fraud class-action suit.

"Over the past few years, the single cup market has been growing, and the two dominate alternatives were the Kraft Tassimo System and the Keurig system," explains McCarthy. "But Keurig has been winning the battle, and its market share was growing. We suspect that Starbucks was frustrated with that, and back in 2009, it started expressing an interest in getting out of the Tassimo deal with Kraft so it could be freed up to do a deal with Keurig."

Kraft tried to block Starbucks' plan to drop Tassimo and filed an injunction in 2010. The court documents make it clear that Starbucks was going to make the switch, says McCarthy. "Frankly if you look at that file, it is telling. They knew then that they were going to be leaving consumers in the lurch with a product that couldn't be used for what they purchased it for."

Even though Starbucks was planning on switching to Keurig, it continued to sell Tassimo machines.

The suit asks that Starbucks provides Tassimo buyers with a refund. McCarthy can't be sure of the exact class period until he gets more information. However, he suspects anyone who bought a Tassimo between approximately 2009 to the present would be eligible to join the class.

"What is interesting is my people are telling me these were still on the shelves as recently as a couple of weeks ago," says McCarthy. "They advertise them saying Tassimo is the system if you want Starbucks coffee. Not only that, Starbucks just introduced cups for the Keurig system—so talk about confusion for the retail consumer."


Tim McCarthy is a lawyer with the McCarthy Law Group. The firm practices consumer class action and other types of litigation.