Sheila Morrison set up her Starbucks card to auto reload by linking it to her credit card.

"Any time I went into Starbucks I didn't have to worry about having cash," Morrison said.

Then her daughter used the card at a North Surrey Starbucks in April.

"She was told there wasn't enough left on the card and she had to pay a couple of dollars more for the coffees. She was asked if she wanted the card back and she said if there was nothing on it no and so the Starbucks employee took the card."

Morrison then noticed on her credit card bill that the card was being used.

She had three $20 charges in the space of just five days. She called Starbucks,

"I talked to a supervisor and she said there was nothing that she could do for me," Morrison said.

Starbucks tells us its terminals don't distinguish between auto-reload cards and regular ones. If a customer turns in a card it's thrown in the garbage. Someone could have retrieved Morrison's from the trash and started using it.

Starbucks declined an on camera interview but in an e-mail statement it "recommends that customers treat the Starbucks card like cash. Starbucks will freeze a customer's remaining balance at the time the card is reported as lost or stolen....and mail the customer a replacement card immediately - without hassles or fees."

The key words are "remaining balance," Starbucks was refusing to pay the full $60 charged to Morrison's credit card. It was just going to give her the last few dollars left over after the thief had used it.

Morrison felt that since Starbucks took possession of the card, it should cover all the losses.

They are taking responsibility for the card when they are taking them from you," Morrison said.

After CTV contacted Starbucks, Morrison got some good news.

"They called me back and said they would reload the card with all the money that was put through on my visa," she said.

A simple solution that would prevent this from ever happening again, is for Starbucks to put the returned cards through a shredder or simply to cut them up with a pair of scissors like you would do with a credit card.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Chris Olsen