Tesco Shopper? An easy way to double the Clubcard points you earn

MSE_Martin · 23 May 2006 at 12:46PM

What is it?

The Clubcard Plus account is a card which works a bit like a basic bank account; you top it up with cash and use it to pay for your shopping in store or online. Do this and you get double points on your spending. As I always say Never ever ever spend your Tesco vouchers in store. Convert them to deals vouchers and you can get four times the amount in days out, RAC membership or magazine subscriptions. There is the option of having an overdraft on the card but don't touch this with a bargepole as the rate is sky high. Provided you don't apply for an overdraft there won't be a credit check made on you, just an ID check.

How do I get one?

Unfortunately you can't get applications in store you have to call Tesco Personal Finance on 0845 710 40 10 and they will send out the application to you. (Update: thanks to Gazman who found an alternative geographical number - 0141 3088028.)

T's and C's

As part of the conditions of the account you have to set up a standing order to fund the account each month. However just set up a standing order for £1 a month and then top up the account with cash at customer services as and when you need it. The cash will be instantly available to spend. Unfortunately you can't add funds using a debit or credit card. While you can't use it to buy electrical goods you can use it on fuel at Tesco stations.

What about my existing clubcard?

This is a separate account, so you'll get separate statements although you can ask to have the two accounts linked so all points accumulate on one account.

trippy · 24 May 2006 at 8:29AM

We sto our groceries money into an ING account every month and then use our Egg Money card to buy the groceries (99% of which is from Tesco). When the statement comes in, we then transfer the money from the ING account to pay the Egg Money card. We spend £300 a month on groceries.

So taking into account the small amount of interest generated from ING and the cashback element from Egg Money, are we better off using the Clubcard Plus account instead? We always use the vouchers for deals.

I'm sure there's a mathematician who can get his head round that!

gazman_2 · 24 May 2006 at 9:09AM

Martin - Thats a great one for getting double points.

My only complaint is that you gave us an 0845 number when there is a normal landline and `freephone` number aswell !!

Tesco Personal Finance 0845 7104010 or 0141 3088028 or 0800 7838001 Instant Access Savings automated service

I copied the regular numbers from https://www.saynoto0870.com so all can benefit even more.

Keep up the great work !

Gazman

melanie_frontage · 24 May 2006 at 9:27AM

trippy wrote:

We sto our groceries money into an ING account every month and then use our Egg Money card to buy the groceries (99% of which is from Tesco). When the statement comes in, we then transfer the money from the ING account to pay the Egg Money card. We spend £300 a month on groceries.

So taking into account the small amount of interest generated from ING and the cashback element from Egg Money, are we better off using the Clubcard Plus account instead? We always use the vouchers for deals.

I'm sure there's a mathematician who can get his head round that!

I would like an answer to this too! I do a similar thing to trippy but use an MBNA points card which gives moneyback or rewards.

I am hopeless at maths !!!

bunnymom · 24 May 2006 at 9:32AM

We use a Tesco Visa card to pay our groceries. you get points for every pound you spend as well as the grocery points. Is the Club card plus account any better? any one know?

silvercar · 24 May 2006 at 10:02AM

I'm going to try the maths, please feel free to correct any assumptions.

Tesco Clubcard Plus card is doubling the points so you are getting an extra point for every £1 spent (2 points instead of 1). So these extra points are converting into deals at 4:1. Spending £100 gives you 400 extra deal points. Lets say these 400 deal points are worth £4 off the deal (personally I think the deals are restricted to expensive optons that you could get for less elsewhere and therefore only worth about £3 (certainly you would get about £3 on Ebay for them but that's another story).

So using clubcard extra for £100 shopping gives you an extra £4 in deals.

£100 in ING (or other high saving) account at 5% interest (net/gross?) for 1 month generates 42p.
cashback on £100 from Egg or similar cashback credit card at 0.5% for 1 month generates 4p

I have assumed you can transfer the money between accounts instantly without loss of interest!

Total interest and cashback from cards on £100 spend is 46p

Looks like the clubcard extra card wins.

RufusA · 24 May 2006 at 10:09AM

trippy wrote:

So taking into account the small amount of interest generated from ING and the cashback element from Egg Money, are we better off using the Clubcard Plus account instead? We always use the vouchers for deals.

Very simply with the Tesco's plus account you get an extra 1 clubcard point for every £1 spent. 250 points will give you £2.50 off groceries or £10 off a day out.

So in essence 1 point = 4p (in days out) or 1p in groceries.

Assuming 1% cashback at Egg, and Ing @ 5% interest (with 60 days interest free on the Egg), then best case for your £300 you spend you get £3 cashback and £2.50 interest = £5.50, though likely to be less depending on statement dates, income tax etc.

With double points instead for the same £300 spend you could get an additional £12 to spend on days out!

So superficially the Tesco route is better, but other factors to consider are:

1) You can usually source day out tickets for less than the full ticket price via lastminute or train 2for1 offers. Therefore what seems like a bargain £30 ticket (that cost you only £7.50 in clubcard vouchers) may have been purchased for only £15 in cash if you shopped around.

2) There are restrictions and a limited range of things that you can spend clubcard vouchers on - whereas cashback can be spent anywhere! No point having cheap tickets to somewhere you don't want to go.

3) There's a hassle factor in having to queue at CS to top-up your card particularly when there is a long line of R&Rers in front of you - what value do you put on your time?

Personally I'll stick with the cashback card, and buy "extra points" products if I need to boost my points balance. I use my vouchers to buy cheap day tickets to Legoland & Zoos which I can then upgrade to annual passes with a discount based on the full ticket price.

HTH - Rufus.

RebeccaP_2 · 24 May 2006 at 10:19AM

RufusA wrote:

I use my vouchers to buy cheap day tickets to Legoland & Zoos which I can then upgrade to annual passes with a discount based on the full ticket price.

HTH - Rufus.

How does this work please?

gazza007 · 24 May 2006 at 10:26AM

I shop at tesco but gain most of my points by using my Tesco visa card on all my purchases & just pay it off every month.
They have just launched a new card that pays 5 points for £4 spend or 1 point for £4 elswhere. I don't think this is as good as my existing Tesco card

Roger_Rampant · 24 May 2006 at 10:47AM

We use a Tesco Visa card to pay our groceries. you get points for every pound you spend as well as the grocery points. Is the Club card plus account any better? any one know?

If you use the Tesco Visa Card and a normal clubcard you will be receiving double points anyway, one set from the clubcard and one set from the visa card

medianige · 24 May 2006 at 1:28PM

I also use my Tesco visa and transfer money from my current account (online) the day I spend anything into a high-interest account at a building society. I use this to pay the visa off in full, getting the interest free period on the card, get double points at tesco (as well as points from elsewhere) and get the interest from the building society account. Winner all round...

Tesco Shopper? An easy way to double the Clubcard points you earn

Comments

Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

🚀 Getting Started

Categories

Is this how you want to be seen?

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free