Nectar - blocking spending points without communicating with customer at all

YH

Interested to hear if anyone else has had this issue. Went to spend points on Sainsburys Online - could not redeem points - the error message was 'technical difficulties' so went into store did shop and again could not redeem points (which could have been very embarrassing if I did not have any other means of paying for the shop). Spoke with Nectar - apparently whilst I can still collect points and get Sainsburys nectar prices - Nectar had put a block on me redeeming any points - firstly they said there might have been suspicious activity and so wanted to prevent fraud, when I asked what the fraudulent activity might have been they could not answer and said it may be that because I have a significant amount of points on the account that might also have triggered a block. I was astounded that Nectar has not attempted to communicated with me at all on this and I have never heard of a block because of too many points on the account. Has anyone else?
The advice was that I should set up a new nectar account (with all the admin that entails) and once that's done get Nectar to transfer the points. They could not do anything their end. So now I have set up a new nectar account for only the link process with Sainsburys not to be working - and spending a useless 30mins on the phone to Sainsburys. I find this lack of interoperability between Sainsburys and Nectar quite astounding and there doesn't seem to be any effort from either party to address the issues. It has made me rethink my loyalty to Sainsburys.

Kat78MFW

We have a similar problem with about £35 in points that we cannot access. I tried to set up a new Nectar card but couldn't even get through that part of the process. So frustrating. 

irelavv

Hey, I had the exact same issue. I had over £100 in points on my Nectar card before I found out it was blocked due to "suspicious activity" the exact same way you did.

I was very worried as I could not remember some memorable info from over 10 years ago, but I managed to open a new account and have a new card, to which I had all my points transferred.

At first, I could not redeem the points at Sainsbury's self checkout till. The trick is to go to a manned till and ask the cashier to redeem points for you. After this, you should be able to spend your points online as well. I don't know what the logic is behind this but I'm only sharing my experience and what worked for me. This happened last month actually.

Also, I still get the "You have 0 points to redeem" on the self service tills at checkout, but I know those tills do not work properly when you want to redeem points in store. The second trick is to use a cash + card till and NOT have used their Smartshop app for your shopping. Again, I have no idea why it is so complicated, but after multiple trial and errors, that is how I got my points to work.