Anyone hunting for Starbucks survey rules finds two documents and neither covers the American receipt survey, which published nothing and has since closed. A dated ruleset governs the Customer Experience Sweepstakes: Starbucks Corporation sponsors it, Merkle Inc. administers it, entry is open to residents of the 50 states and the District of Columbia aged 18 or over, and 1,200 gift cards are on offer. Separate terms cover the United Kingdom.
Every Starbucks guide on this site
What you need
12 itemsHow to take the survey
Work out which programme the rules you want belong to
Three different things get called the Starbucks survey. Two of them have terms. Guides describing a free drink for a code off a receipt are describing the third, and no ruleset for it has ever surfaced.
Check the eligibility bar before anything else
Entry is confined to legal residents of the 50 states and the District of Columbia who are at least 18 at the time of entry. Employees of Merkle Inc., its parent and affiliate companies, their immediate families and household members are shut out.
Count the entry periods, not the days
Twelve monthly entry periods sit inside the promotion period. Each has its own drawing date, listed in the rules, about six weeks after the period closes. Entering on the first of a month and the last buys the same single chance.
Know what winning obliges you to do
Notification arrives by email. A potential winner has to sign and return a declaration of compliance, a liability waiver and an IRS Form W-9 where applicable, received within 5 days. Miss that and the prize is forfeit. A hundred $100 gift cards go per monthly entry period, giving 1,200 prizes and a total approximate retail value of $120,000.
Treat the British terms as British
Starbucks does publish receipt survey terms in the United Kingdom, administered by Service Management Group Limited. They govern nothing in America, and they describe a voucher rather than a draw.
If something goes wrong
I cannot find rules for the receipt survey
- Cause
- None were published while it ran
- Fix
- Stop looking. Guides quoting a 14-day window and a 30-day validation code cite no document, and the entry page now returns a closure notice anyway.
A rules page I found gives different prize figures
- Cause
- Older promotion periods carried their own numbers
- Fix
- Match the period to today's date. The 2024 edition of these rules ran to 30 September 2025 and has been superseded.
I am 17 and want to enter
- Cause
- The age bar is 18 at the time of entry
- Fix
- No parental consent clause softens it. An underage entry is void, and a prize would be withdrawn at the verification stage.
I live outside the United States
- Cause
- Eligibility stops at the 50 states and the District of Columbia
- Fix
- British customers have their own terms, administered by Service Management Group Limited, which pay a voucher in store rather than entering a draw.
I won and then heard nothing more
- Cause
- Paperwork is due back inside 5 days
- Fix
- Check spam for the notification email. A declaration, a liability waiver and an IRS Form W-9 all have to reach the administrator inside that window.
Two of us entered from the same address
- Cause
- Shared email addresses are prohibited
- Fix
- A home address may be shared; an email address may not. Give each entrant their own or both entries risk disqualification.
What’s fixed, and what actually varies
Rules exist here in an odd distribution: plenty for the draw, plenty for Britain, none at all for the thing most people mean.
Fixed
- Starbucks Corporation is the named sponsor of the sweepstakes
- Merkle Inc. is the named administrator
- The promotion period runs 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026
- Entrants must be 18 or over and resident in the 50 states or the District of Columbia
- A potential winner has 5 days to return the declaration and IRS Form W-9
- 1,200 prizes, each a $100 gift card, total approximate retail value $120,000
Varies
- The odds, which move with entries received in each monthly period
- Whether an emailed invitation reaches a given customer at all
- What the American receipt survey required, since it published nothing
- What the UK app survey pays now the 50 Bonus Stars offer has lapsed
A real ruleset carries five things: a sponsor, an administrator, dated entry periods, a prize with a stated value, and an eligibility clause. Count them. A page giving a reward and a deadline while naming none of the five is repeating somebody, with nothing behind it to appeal to when a store says no.
How Starbucks compares
Three brands, three answers to the question of who publishes the terms.
| Chain | Who publishes terms | What the terms cover | Age bar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starbucks | Sponsor and administrator, both named | A dated prize draw, 1,200 gift cards | 18 |
| Chick-fil-A | The company, in short support answers | An emailed offer, taken within 2 days | None stated |
| Popeyes | Nobody first-party that could be found | Nothing verifiable | Disputed at 16 and 18 |
Terms change by market and period. A dated document beats this table.
Popeyes shows what the absence looks like from the reader's side: confident figures, no document, and no way to tell a real condition from an invented one. Starbucks sits at the opposite end for its draw and in the same hole as Popeyes for its receipt survey.
What a published ruleset settles, and what silence leaves open
Search for the terms of this survey and the results are mostly confident summaries with nothing under them. Sorting the real documents from the rest takes a minute once you know there are two.
The substantial one governs the Starbucks Customer Experience Sweepstakes. Read on 25 August 2026, it names Starbucks Corporation of Seattle, Washington as sponsor and Merkle Inc. of Southfield, Michigan as administrator. Its promotion period runs from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026, divided into twelve monthly entry periods with drawings listed against each. Entry is open to legal residents of the 50 states and the District of Columbia aged at least 18, capped at one per person per period, with no purchase required.
Prizes are uniform: a $100 gift card, approximate retail value $100, one hundred awarded each monthly period. Odds are expressed the way American sweepstakes rules always express them, as a function of eligible entries received, which is honest and useless for planning. Winning brings paperwork, all of it due back inside 5 days, with forfeiture as the stated consequence of missing the deadline.
Britain has the second document. Service Management Group Limited administers a receipt survey there, paying £2 off a £6 remaining transaction total within 7 days of the printed date and time. Roughly 1 in 20 customers get a paper invitation and about 1 in 5 an app one, and the app version paid 50 Bonus Stars before 20:00 on 11 May 2026. Photographs, photocopies and scans are refused.
Between the two sits the gap. The American receipt survey, run on InMoment and reached through mystarbucksvisit.com, published no sponsor, no entry period, no age bar and no reward terms anyone can now point to. Starbucks Rewards carries the everyday value instead.
Questions people ask
Who runs the Starbucks survey sweepstakes?
Starbucks Corporation is the sponsor and Merkle Inc. is the administrator. Both are named in the rules, with street addresses in Seattle, Washington and Southfield, Michigan.
How old do I have to be?
18 at the time of entry. There is no parental-consent route, and the age bar applies to every one of the twelve monthly entry periods.
Who is eligible to enter?
Legal residents of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Employees of the administrator, its affiliates, and their immediate families and households are excluded.
What are the odds of winning?
Stated as depending on eligible entries received in the applicable monthly period. With 100 prizes a month, no fixed ratio is promised.
When does the current entry period end?
30 September 2026 closes the promotion period that began on 1 October 2025. Each month inside it is a separate entry period with its own drawing date.
Are there rules for the old receipt survey?
None have ever surfaced. No sponsor, entry period, age bar or reward term was published for it, which is why guides describing it disagree with each other.
What happens if I win?
Notification comes by email, and a declaration of compliance, liability waiver and IRS Form W-9 must reach the administrator inside 5 days or the prize is forfeit.
Do the UK terms apply to me in America?
No. Service Management Group Limited administers a British survey paying £2 off a £6 remaining transaction total, and nothing in those terms governs a US visit.