Poor Farmer

By Associated Press via The Washington Post November 14, 2011 Elise Amendola, file/Associated Press) - FILE - In this  Nov. 2, 2009 file photo, a customer enter a Starbucks  coffee shop in Arlington, Mass. Starbucks has stopped tacking  a surcharge on bags of coffee beans weighing less than  a pound nationwide after a Massachusetts consumer  protection agency discovered the practice and fined the company. BOSTON — Starbucks has stopped tacking on a fee for bags of coffee beans that weigh less than a pound. The Seattle coffee company eliminated the fee at its stores nationwide this month after a Massachusetts consumer-protection agency fined the company over the practice. The Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation found in August that the coffee chain failed to notify customers either in the store or on their receipts that it was adding a surcharge of about $1.50 for buying a partial bag of beans....

Half-pound bags were priced higher By Martine Powers The Boston Globe November 14, 2011 Last week, Starbucks nixed the $1.50 fee - and not just in Massachusetts. Pressure from the state’s consumer agency spurred the company to eliminate the extra charge nationwide. “It’s a message to the whole marketplace,’’ Barbara Anthony, undersecretary of the Office of Consumer Affairs, said in a phone interview yesterday. “We have to be able to trust that the price we’re paying is the price we should be paying for a particular commodity.’’ When a customer ordered a bag of coffee beans weighing less than 1 pound, Starbucks tacked on about $1.50 to the price without putting up signs about the fee in the store or itemizing the extra charge on receipts. For example, beans listed at $11.95 per pound ended up costing $7.45 for a half-pound - not $5.98, or 50 percent of the price. At a Boylston Street Starbucks in Back Bay yesterday, 26-year-old Joseph Hawilo said he was ...