Tesco Clubcard Vouchers Rip Off

blue_monkey_2

Incapuppy wrote: »

You use £1000 of vouchers to pay for this holiday = the holiday is free, you save £500

You pay £500 for the holiday = you need to find £500 from somewhere.

No, you have £500 in vouchers, the brochure price is £1000 - you use your vouchers and you have to find £500 from somewhere to pay the balance.

You pay the Special Offer price online of £500 and save your vouchers to use elsewhere on days out. Whyt would you bother using the vouchers? And maybe this is the point, maybe this is why the brochure price is double what the 'Special Offer Price' is.

Yes. Use them or lose them IMO. How long is it going to take me now to save £500 in vouchers? I might as well use them at Butlins than save £60 a year in CC Vouchers towards an overseas holiday for the next 10 years and extend the vouchers over and over!! Codes are now almost non-existant and it is not worth doing. I've not found a single code I can use in the last 9 months on my card. They do not send wine vouchers like they used to either. I used to buy everything from Tesco - insurances, breakdown cover, all Xmas presents, this year I've hardly spent anything other than one monthly shop (as it is on favourites so easier) and petrol - one tank once a month. Now I go to Sainsbury and get nectar points and Boots who seem happy to give everything away AND give me advantage points.

photome

crabbylady wrote: »

John Fowler holidays IS offering 50% off their holidays in thier brochure - red prices show discount, crossed out black prices are the 'original' price - you can only use CC on thier 'original price'.

THe vouchers are not 'something-for-nothing'. They are a percentage return on our shopping, credit card and fuel spending - we could have gone with a different company and had cash back or slightly cheaper products. Having factored this in, we decided to stick with Tesco because the return was good - no so good now!

Blue monkey - I too have wondered if some operators have put their 'original' prices up to compensate for them not getting a good return on their vouchers when they submit them to Tesco (a John Fowler phone person told me Tesco only give them a percentage back of the CC vouchers they send them to Tesco so the holiday operators arent happy about the T&C imposed by Tesco in recent months. They say the T&C have changed form last year when they could offer Tesco customers the same deal as everyone else)

No need to shout. You would still be getting the holiday cheaper alternatively (as others have said) use them on something different and pay cash for your holiday.

blue_monkey_2

When we booked Butlins last year it was 50% cheaper to pay with 'real money'.

My friend told me the same this week, she looked at JF and they wanted £1200 for a standard caravan in August for one week, yet when I looked online it was around £650 for that accomodation for that week.

As I say, it is about weighing up your options. I would not use them for Florida now and it is the only place my kids want to go, I've looked around and found it is much cheaper to book it all myself. I am only going to Butlins because I've the vouchers and the kids want to go, this year Butlins and next year Florida. But it will not be on CC vouchers as the only points I seem to get now are standard 1pt per £1 and green points. Although Asda do not give points they are cheaper and so I go there and save money instead.

photome

blue_monkey wrote: »

No, you have £500 in vouchers, the brochure price is £1000 - you use your vouchers and you have to find £500 from somewhere to pay the balance.

You pay the Special Offer price online of £500 and save your vouchers to use elsewhere on days out. Whyt would you bother using the vouchers? And maybe this is the point, maybe this is why the brochure price is double what the 'Special Offer Price' is.

Yes. Use them or lose them IMO. How long is it going to take me now to save £500 in vouchers? I might as well use them at Butlins than save £60 a year in CC Vouchers towards an overseas holiday for the next 10 years and extend the vouchers over and over!! Codes are now almost non-existant and it is not worth doing. I've not found a single code I can use in the last 9 months on my card. They do not send wine vouchers like they used to either. I used to buy everything from Tesco - insurances, breakdown cover, all Xmas presents, this year I've hardly spent anything other than one monthly shop (as it is on favourites so easier) and petrol - one tank once a month. Now I go to Sainsbury and get nectar points and Boots who seem happy to give everything away AND give me advantage points.

You missed the point the Op says she has £250 x 4 = £1000 to pay the brochure price of a hol, seems a good deal to me.

Alternatively she can book the £1000 hol with 50% off and pay £500 cash and keep her vouchers.

So either a hol for nothing (well £250 of vouchers)

or £500!

blue_monkey_2

crabbylady, book the holiday and pay cash, look at where there are parks and use the vouchers to have free days out. Also check restaurants at the places you are going and use CC vouchers, also 50% off vouchers and use these for food too.

In regard to selling them on eBay: Yes, they can be exchanged for the Days Out vouchers as you do not need ID to use them. You'll find a lot on there and you either exchange them up into Days Out and sell them or you sell them as is and after the bidding infishes you change them up for the winning bidder and send Special Delivery. http://shop.ebay.co.uk/items/_W0QQ_nkwZclubcardQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZR18QQ_mdoZ

blue_monkey_2

OK, I looked at booking a holiday with my vouchers so let me tell you what I found:

Virgin holiday, holiday was £3,700 (without transfers which were another £240) - so £3940.

Booking flight on ba.com and hotel on expedia with Disney hotel for 2 weeks and Disney Magical Express (free transfer from Airport to Hotel to Airport) came to just under £2000.

So the choice is to use all £2000 in vouchers and top up £1940 - or you can book and pay £2000 for the exact same holiday and keep the vouchers in your pocket. No brainer?? But no incentive to use Tesco for vouchers anymore is there??

photome

blue_monkey wrote: »

OK, I looked at booking a holiday with my vouchers so let me tell you what I found:

Virgin holiday, holiday was £3,700 (without transfers which were another £240) - so £3940.

Booking flight on ba.com and hotel on expedia with Disney hotel for 2 weeks and Disney Magical Express (free transfer from Airport to Hotel to Airport) came to just under £2000.

So the choice is to use all £2000 in vouchers and top up £1940 - or you can book and pay £2000 for the exact same holiday and keep the vouchers in your pocket. No brainer?? But no incentive to use Tesco for vouchers anymore is there??

I disagree, maybe there is no incentive to use them for holidays, but as i said before I use them on all sorts of days out, meals out etc etc.

isitenough

The points scheme has been exploited/abused by a lot of people over the years and that is why the points are at a bare minimum now. (not by me I will add, I used what I got).
I use Tesco as it's the most local so don't have a problem. Using my vouchers for a holiday is a luxury and has to be somewhere I want to go, hence using them for Siblu France. Going to Florida with them would take forever!
No one forces people to shop at Tesco and acru points. Asda is quite nice but way too far to travel just for a weekly shop (20 miles versus 1 mile to Tesco).
The bonus schemes are just that - a bonus! Nectar points paying for stuff in Argos is handy but not the main reason I collect them.
Getting 'free' RAC membership and days out are what it's all about.

spender

I saved my vouchers over a couple of years and have paid for a tour of West America. Would of been free (booked when the taxes etc were included in the clubcard token) apart for the upgraded flights. Very happy but knew I would have to save for a while.

blue_monkey_2

Absolutely I agree, they were abused but I feel I used the services that were openy available to all and did not abuse them. At the end of the day it depends on what you want. I was saving them for Florida, I have a child with Spcial Needs so eating out is not an option for us - unless it is Pizza Hut buffet, and days out are also rare, so for us using them for Florida was prefect. Once we realised that the CC scheme was not as it was we went to Butlins, then we went to another Butlins - both times for the weekend break - this year we are sing the last of them for a week there.

But as a plus for us, we are in a holiday club and we 'bank' our week's holiday and swap it with others in the bank for a feww, we have just found out that the company we bank we has Disney Vacation properties available - so we get to go to Florida for around £1400 for flights and 5* accomdation. Hopefully this will be in the new Animal Kingdom Lodges. So we are happy. We just have to find the right time to go as DS does not like either intense heat or crowds. I have to say that we even looked at using the vouchers and booking the cheapest of cheap accomodation and then staying elsewhere to get use of them but it was just not worth using them. We've had a few holidays though but CC scheme is not what it used to be and maybe because of the abuse Tesco do not give the same to companies as they used to - hence a lot of them pulling out of offering CC Deals.