16,000 Nectar points stolen this morning

debsy42

We received an email this morning to say our Nectar points balance has been adjusted by 16,000 points as they were used today at the Argos in Brentwood. Thing is my hubby and I have Covid and haven't been outside since before Christmas as we are isolating never mind going on a jolly to Brentwood.

I telephoned the Nectar people who said they would raise a complaint and pass through to another department to look into for us. They have deactivated our old account and set up a new one but I don''t feel hopeful we will see these points again. I'm maybe a bit Covid foggy but I don't know how someone has managed to access our points and spend them virtually wiping out the account. Has this happened to anyone else, did you get your points back? Thanks for any help.

yellowbear

Not Nectar, but same thing happened with my Tesco points. Somebody hacked my account and tried to buy Alton Tower tickets with them. Tesco customer service were excellent and cancelled the vouchers and replaced them. This was a few years ago though.

TELLIT01

There have been many similar stories.  Do a search on "nectar points stolen".  Unfortunately Nectar haven't been good at even acknowledging that it can happen.  Even when the points have been used hundreds of miles from the person's address, Nectar generally blame the customer and say they must have given the card to somebody else to use.

Movie_Star

We had a credit card account hacked once and that account was set up for one online clothing retailer and no one else. The retailer would not have it that it must have been a member of their staff. I’ve read about hacking at forecourts where the card details were recorded by the card machine, extracted, and sold on. The nectar card is not secure and so the details could have been recorded anywhere over the past months and sold on over the internet.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1gJz1n3J50ZHYP1NcFHVYBY/nectar-fraud

pinkshoes

Did you have a secure password for the account? 

Have you contacted the Brentwood Argos store to request CCTV from the time of purchase? Did you contact the police on 101 regarding the theft?

I have no idea how much 16000 points equates to.

Grumpy_chap

pinkshoes said:

I have no idea how much 16000 points equates to.

https://www.argos.co.uk/help/nectar

• 500 points are worth £2.50 when purchasing products through Argos.

So, 16,000 points = £80

Jenni_D

I currently have 282 points worth £1.41 ... we spent some on the run up to Christmas. So it seems it is 2 points = 1p, thus 16,000 points would be worth £80.

debsy42

I have tried ringing Argos Brentwood all day but they aren't answering their phone, keep getting a recorded message to say how busy they are. I hadn't thought about reporting to the police, the chap at Nectar didn't suggest it but I'll give it a go. The points are worth about £80 which isn't a small amount of money, the account has now been virtually depleted.

MollyR

I discovered today that 59,000 points had been stolen from my Nectar account, which I only used for online shopping with Sainsburys.  There were three separate transactions on the same day, two at one London Sainsburys and one at another.  I phoned Nectar and was astonished at how readily Customer Services said they would refund the points to my account, sending me a new card (and telling me not to use the existing one any more).  It is clearly an inside job;  I suspect within Nectar itself, since I never shop in person at Sainsburys so my card could not be cloned.  But it is obviously something they are accustomed to dealing with!

Nectar never send me statements of my balance, or even e-mail confirmations when I use my points, so I only discovered today that these points had been stolen in November.  I tried to place an order with Sainsburys and was told I had something like £16 Nectar credit, when I knew I had over £300!  (I had accumulated a load of Avios which I transferred from BA to Nectar a year or more ago, since I was not planning to fly with BA again.)

So check your Nectar account, folks, and if there are transactions you do not recognise then phone Nectar on 0344 811 0811 to get it sorted.

theonlywayisup

A side note.  I use Award Wallet to monitor all my loyalty points.  It alerted me to a theft of Tesco vouchers about 4 years ago and because of the alert I had the vouchers cancelled.  

DCFC79

was the password easy to guess, had it been used for another website/email account that was breached ?

Did you click on a link in an email you thought was from Nectar ?

Yes people have had them stolen, don't know if they get them back, I'm sure its been on Watchdog before.

This is why you shouldn't save them, use them up.