Great Hunt: What are the most useful loyalty cards?

bsms1147

I've recently started putting all my loyalty cards into an app on my smartphone so I don't have to carry them all around with me at once.

They work best with optical barcode scanners (rather than laser), but more stores are using these now. Otherwise the person behind the till would input your card number manually. Arguably a bit more clunky, but worth it for the convenience of not carrying the cards around.

Two apps I have experience of using at the moment are Stocard (which simply stores the card details) and Loyalive (which in addition to storing the card details, can fetch the points totals of each).

jenniewb

I've a wallet which despite it's size, is way too small and it's directly as a result of having so many loyalty cards. I have little fixed patterns in where and what I spent so always take all my cards with me to avoid missing anything or having to carry a paper receipt and a nagging reminder to load points with later.


The best loyalty card? It varies. It depends where I shop and what I need. Tesco are good overall, but Boots offer effectively 4% cashback where as Tesco offer only 1% back.
Nectar are one of the worst, already their points were pretty low but halving their value just made me think I'd not use them as frequently because they are already expensive, halving anything rewarded just made me think I'm going to get less value for the same things at the same price.
Having said that, Waitrose isn't that much better with the few exceptions where if you have a card you can be included in some of the deals. Only very few if any seem to apply to me.
But the crown of complication and pointlessness is the Morrisons card. Pretty crazy that they've tried to bamboozle the customer so they think they're getting something for their money when actually they are not. I think I worked out that one of the big brassy arrow-like signs which staff had gone to the trouble of putting on a shelf beneath a certain product, once uncoded simply meant if you bought the £4 item, you'd get 2p back on your Morrisons card. Hmmm...


Superdrug, Holland and Barratt, The Co-op, Costa, Ikea Family (if I could even get to a store!) are among many others. I'm too tired to drag my wallet over and include every card but to explain, it has 12 pockets and most are doubled if not tripled up with loyalty cards. I don't keep my debit card in the same wallet because it would just get lost.

gloriouslyhappy

I have a Nectar card and a Sainsbury's Nectar credit card, which I use for all my shopping, wherever I happen to shop that week, and pay it off every month so no interest. I accumulate a lot of Nectar points which I use to pay for xmas shopping, but the interesting thing is I go for the occasional top up at a nearby Tesco Express, and when I use my Nectar credit card to pay for Tesco or Lidl purchases, Sainsbury's get all worried I might be switching supermarkets, and send me loads of money-off coupons, ie spend £40, get £8 off!

I do also have a Tesco card, but find their coupons annoying as I prefer to chose what I spend my points on, not some computer generated specific-product coupons for things I don't normally buy.

gloriouslyhappy

I also have an Ikea card, and use that if I'm near an Ikea for a free cup of tea weekdays, I can check my emails free on their wifi for a quick half-hour break, then pick up some bargain salmon steaks in their food store £6 for 4 steaks, packaged so you can cut off as many as you need without opening whole package. The Ikea card also gives you great discounts with 'family' prices, so always check what's on 'family' offer before buying big items, they very kindly tell you what's coming up on offer the following month too. I find the Ikea card much more useful than my Tesco card.

Ultrasonex

I have A Tesco Clubcard, Nectar Card, Boots Advantage Card, Superdrug Card, Matalan card (lying fallow), Shell card and the perfume shop loyalty cards.

I used to do 90% of my shopping in Tesco - if you had asked me this question last year, my answer would have been Tesco Clubcard. I buy my fuel equally from BP, Tesco and Sainsbury depending on which of them has the cheapest fuel, best points promo et al. I'm not one to let those points go to waste and but shell fuel also if there is a promo or I am offered bonus points for buying shell fuel.

Thanks to MSE, I heard about Nectar Canvas and E-rewards and joined up in February 2015. (These schemes are time consuming and need a lot of time and patience but well worth it in the end) They have boosted my nectar points no end. I switched to shopping in Sainsbury to redeem the nectar points I earned from these 2 schemes. I have redeemed my nectar points about 4 - 6 times so far this year and redeemed not less than £50 each time. On 2 of those occasions, I also had a £7.50 Sainsburys coupon (valid if I spend £50 during the same transaction) so got £57.50 worth of groceries free! I tell you - I skipped all the way home! In march this year, Sainsburys had their double points promo so I doubled £50 worth of points and got £100 to spend in store. I spent most of that on electrical items and clothing which were already less than half price. Nectar has been good to me in 2015 and takes the crown! :T :T :T :T:beer: T :T :beer:

EXSUDBURY

I use Tesco as the 3 times benefit is good, Boots Advantage card as it is possible to obtain goods using the points and that seems like getting them for free. I also have a Debenhams card that I used initially to get 20% additional discount off some needed luggage and only occasionally for othe purchases as there is no close store.

Paul56

gsddusty wrote: »

Hiya just so you know co-op were not paying any rewards due to the mess they were in which is why you haven't received anything in ages. I don't know when they were going to restart

Could be something like 3 years... but if you scan your card at a till you get coupons, which is a reward. Also if you are interested in the democracy side of the Co-op and you can get 250 points on your card in a year (= £4.80 a week of shopping) you can take part in the Co-op's elections etc. You are right that The Co-operative Group has been in a mess, but the executive is rebuilding its trading operations and members are rebuilding its democracy. TCG may be part of the future... let's see.

karlandsusan

Definitely Tesco for me - I've had my Tesco credit card for years, use it for all my day-to-day spending (paying it off in full every month of course!) I've have lost count of the free things I've got through doubling or quadrupling my clubcard vouchers....furniture, a gas BBQ, meals out, hotel stays, wine, plants for the garden, a Hudl tablet, iTunes vouchers, cinema tickets and clothing in-store etc

lulu_92

I regularly use my Clubcard, Nectar, Advantage Card and Morrisons Match and More (although I used to get loads more points on the latter as I'd go in before work and fill up my car there)

The_Old_Bag

alan_pearce wrote: »

I gave up using my Nectar card in 2003. For three years I had been driving 50,000 miles a year, and every other day I used to fill up with (then) £45s worth of diesel. My points collection was obviously massive. Then one day my Nectarcard statement came through and virtually all the points had gone. There had been a load of expensive purchases using my points by somebody in Hemel Hemstead, a washing machine, TV etc.. Neither I nor my wife even knew exactly where Hemel Hemstead was, and we'd certainly never been there - we lived in Devon at the time. I took it up with Nectar and got nowhere - they swore blind it was impossible, and suggested somebody else had used my second card (which was nonsense - my wife had it). So after three years of building up a massive number of points, I lost the lot. I've never used Nectar since.

That is dreadful - I am shocked that Nectar did not call in the police, because it is clearly fraud.
Points have in effect a financial value, so even though it was all your 'points' which had been stolen, it was in effect money.
If someone had a valuable first edition comic stolen, it should not be dismissed as 'just a comic'.
The comic has a financial value - just as nectar points have.

In fact, how can Nectar prove it was not one of their staff who had electronically swiped all your points for their own financial enrichment?
If YOU have your Nectar Card, and your wife has hers, there must be some failing in Nectars system to allow this fraud to happen.

I must admit, I would have gone ballistic, and gone all the way to the top on this - the value was clearly into the hundreds, if not thousands of pounds (£)..... so I would not have been fobbed off by the answers Nectar staff gave you.
I would have told Nectar that I wanted the police called - because you had both nectar cards in your possession, and you had not been using them in Hemel Hemstead.

Not to put too fine a point on it, given the financial rewards they gained via your points, whoever stole from you would carry on with their scam unless they were stopped, and Nectar denying it could happen would not close down the loop-hole which allowed it.