Barclay's Blue Rewards Removing £5 Reward

Hattie627

Fed up with barclays constantly changing the goalposts.

I previously had Blue Rewards when it was profitable but cancelled in Feb 2022. Reinstated them in Nov 2022 solely to get to open the Rainy Day Saver. Been receiving £5 rewards per month for 2 direct debits against monthly BR fee of £5 since then.

Today I have cancelled Blue Rewards, cancelled 2 debit debits from Barclays current account, moved all funds out of Rainy Day Saver to a better paying instant access (Skipton BS FA account at 5.2%) and closed the RDS. All done online. Closing interest on the RDS since last monthly interest payment has been transferred to my Barclays current account and out from there. Now left with a bare Barclays current account with nil balance available for a future switch. No longer need to move £800 per month in and out.

 All sorted, Thanks Barclays!

GTR_King

So can we still keep rainy day saver? I have Apple TV already will it be cheaper with Barclays? Or not?

pochisoldi

No great loss for me - the rainy day saver account had a life span of 6 months for me - BoE rate went up by 1.5% over that 6 months, and the rate paid never changed, so that part of the emergency fund went back into the offset account.

The blue reward (originally £7 net) was an easy £3 net a month while it lasted.

Not interested in Apple+, and MLS isn't worth 15 pence, never mind £15.

danny13579

I ditched Barclays after the debacle that was their last switch offer.

Free offers for Apple+ (and Disney+) are so ubiquitous I don't even bother taking them up anymore. 

Rawrzy

danny13579 said:

Free offers for Apple+ (and Disney+) are so ubiquitous I don't even bother taking them up anymore. 

Yeah Apple TV had nothing stopping you from just cycling through different free offers lol. I got like 2 years of it bouncing between different trials/bonus codes etc. I could have gotten more but I just stopped because I barely use the service so it wasn't even worth the effort inputting the codes.

Not convinced it's worth paying £5 for it and the savings account...

jbrassy

I have the Barclays Premier account, but never signed up to Blue Rewards. The free Apple TV is a welcome addition alongside the free Disney+ I get from Lloyds. You can sign up for Apple TV for free now through the Barclays app and can even share it with other people in your household if you have Family Sharing activated on your Apple account. 

PloughmansLunch

jbrassy said:

I have the Barclays Premier account, but never signed up to Blue Rewards. The free Apple TV is a welcome addition alongside the free Disney+ I get from Lloyds. You can sign up for Apple TV for free now through the Barclays app and can even share it with other people in your household if you have Family Sharing activated on your Apple account. 

Thanks, I've got Avios active rather than Blue Rewards, but managed to find it buried deep in the app and have just signed up:

Products > Premier Banking > Explore all Premier Benefits > Apple TV+

My Products > Rewards screen only shows Avios, but the breadcrumb trail above shows both as active:

WillPS

jbrassy said:

I have the Barclays Premier account, but never signed up to Blue Rewards. The free Apple TV is a welcome addition alongside the free Disney+ I get from Lloyds. You can sign up for Apple TV for free now through the Barclays app and can even share it with other people in your household if you have Family Sharing activated on your Apple account. 

I couldn't seem to find a way to activate it without activating Blue Rewards, but now that you've confirmed it should work I'll turn Blue Rewards back off again - thank you.

Yes, great pair of perks - I don't think I'll be renewing Disney+ when the time comes unless they come up with a way to top up the membership and go ad free, unfortunately. No doubt this will become a problem on Apple TV at some point too, they're the last major platform not to add a 'with ads' tier.

jameseonline

So Barclays have had plenty of opportunities to actually improve Blue Rewards and all they come up with is Apple TV or a sports thing, still got the Rainy Day account which rate hasn't gone up, still have to pay in £800, still got the £5 fee, no longer get the £5 back, so basically you get discounted Apple TV now, that seems to be the only real advantage because several banks do the cashback thing and offers don't tend to be great, usually better off using Top Cashback or Quidco unless you combine. Barclays doing cashback isn't new btw they had it when I got an account a few years back, ended it, then recently added it to Blue Rewards, Blue Rewards hasn't been good for a long time, just look at the alternatives, eg Club Lloyds, Santander Edge, way better. Not used Barclays Blue Rewards for a while and for some unknown reason it's taking them ages to downgrade my rainy day account. I ditched Blue Rewards after they did the 3 months of getting £10 cashback for spending on the card.

jameseonline

Zanderman said:

All Blue Rewards members can now access an Apple TV+ subscription worth £8.99 a month, and watch every Major League Soccer match with an MLS Season Pass subscription, worth £14.99 a month during the season (we’ll update your T&Cs to include this from‌ ‌1 July‌)

Not remotely appealing to anyone (and there are lot of us - perhaps Barclays marketing people don't know that though) who don't follow football at all.

Even worse for those who don't want or need Apple TV.

An actual fiver is much more useful!

Seems very American tbh, not necessarily a bad thing but out of all the TV subscription things how many people in the UK are going to say they have or want to have Apple TV?, I'm willing to bet very little, Disney+ is dominant.

Maybe they could have offered Paramount+ or Netflix or Amazon Prime (those rank higher than Apple TV) or magazine subscriptions or something.