Tesco clubcard vouchers worth it?

Angela84

Hi,

We're getting married May 2011, and I've been saving our clubcard vouchers to convert for the honeymoon, but had a few people mention that because you have to call their special numbers to book holidays, it might be much cheaper to go through different websites and get a much better discount and use the vouchers on something else.

What do you think? I hope to have around £250 vouchers by next Feb March ish, so £1000 worth. I would hope that would cover half the honeymoon, which we haven't decided on yet, but I'm fancying Vegas for a week.

Hope I can get some good advice, thanks

withabix

The discount is against the printed brochure price, which is normal. Unless you are doing a late booking, it shouldn't make the holiday 'overpriced'.

You are of course limited to Virgin and Cosmos (Monarch), unless you want to use the vouchers for hotels, in which case Barcelo is your option for foreign hotels and Airmiles or BA Miles for flights, although you will need a lot more points to get good value from them.

Based on a Clubcard Point being worth 1p in-store, then any greater equivalent than 1p discount off the lowest price of a holiday surely makes it 'worth it' in my opinion.

ie if you've got £250 in Clubcard Points, making £1000 off a holiday, then unless the brochure price is over £750 more than the cheapest price elsewhere, then you've got value out of the points.

becominganobsessivesaver

I think the main problem is you can't book and then pay later - if you wait until march then the prices of flight may have been driven up. Also there may be less choice. You could convert to Goldsmiths vouchers to use towards the rings/presents for bridesmaids etc and try and book the holiday seperately, it would probably be cheaper to sort out your own flight and hotel for Vegas anyway!

richardw

I'd look at the Goldsmith's jewellery.

budgetflyer

I'v noticed that several of the hotel chains, ie MacDonald, Hilton and Barcelo have now amended the T&Cs so you can now book at "best available " rates using Tesco tokens whereas previously it was rack rate or similar.

So Id suggest reading the T&Cs of the pdf of the Virgin offer http://www.tesco.com/CLUBCARD/DEALS/PRODUCTINFOSHEETS/S5024.PDF
check the online price of your selected holiday at https://www.virginholidays.co.uk then phone reservations 0844 557 3876 to do a "dummy booking using part tokens" to see the difference (if any)
Simples

tiamaria

I never found it worthwhile, we saved up for 3 years, still paid a lot more on top than we usually pay for our holidays & being limited to certain companies (Cosmos) found ourselves in the worst hotel we've ever stayed in.

Having said that, I believe a lot of people have been happy with their deals.

ferf1223

withabix wrote: »

ie if you've got £250 in Clubcard Points, making £1000 off a holiday, then unless the brochure price is over £750 more than the cheapest price elsewhere, then you've got value out of the points.

That makes sense and it's easy enough to check and compare the price of booking the elements of the package separately to see what value the points actually have...pricing flights on their own with Virgin and hotels on their own direct with the hotels at least gives an idea...though it's way too early for the best hotel deals to be out for May 2011, so hard to compare the best deal you could get...can only compare the best deal you can get now.

Someone on the Vegas thread used Clubcard points last time and this time is going to covert them to BA points instead I think as she didn't think she got good value out of using Clubcard points for VH to Vegas.

VH is by its nature typically overpriced for Vegas though...but depends on the cost to book everything yourself.

mikey72

I had a package trip to new york, for two of us, with Virgin, paid entirely with about £350 to £400 of tesco vouchers.
Superb value.

YorkshireBoy

Had a week for two in Tenerife earlier this year using Cosmos and Clubcard vouchers.

Brochure price was £1,300.
Best online price obtained was £1,078.
Exchanged points to the value of £570.
So the 'saving' for us was £348.

Not a true 4x deal, but well worth it in my opinion.

loutalucat_2

Having just read the news that Tesco will be reducing the value of their clubcard exchanges I'm wondering if I should redeem my vouchers. I have £80 so far, I've been saving them up to treat my daughter to a holiday when she finishes university. Should I exchange them for airmiles or put them into a virgin holiday or just carry on saving them up? Grateful for any advice, obviously want to get as much as I can!!

Any

loutalucat wrote: »

Having just read the news that Tesco will be reducing the value of their clubcard exchanges I'm wondering if I should redeem my vouchers. I have £80 so far, I've been saving them up to treat my daughter to a holiday when she finishes university. Should I exchange them for airmiles or put them into a virgin holiday or just carry on saving them up? Grateful for any advice, obviously want to get as much as I can!!

If you exchange them now to Virgin, they will only be valid for 6 mths so that might not be best option.

When does she finish? And how flexible will you be?

Airmiles have offers on every week (the yellow ones, I have never collected the other ones) that come to you in email and nearly every week there is a package holiday. You have to book within that week and dates for these are usually given, but if you are flexible (unfortunately not like me at the mo) you can get great bargain.

Example - this week's offer:

Tsilivi, Zante

Alamis Apartments 3 star

7 nights - 1,500 miles + £139 pp
Self-catering


Price based on two people sharing an inland view studio. Departs 21 Oct 2010 from Birmingham. Supplied by Olympic Holidays.