Do changes to high-street loyalty schemes ever benefit us?

I agree with alfa here.

I don’t pay attention to what Tesco does with its Clubcard scheme although the occasional £5 voucher off a future shop makes up for the poor results of their Brandmatch scheme. Tesco is not our preferred supermarket and is mainly used for top-up shopping but occasionally we do a big shop there and after spending £100+ [much of it on branded goods] are underwhelmed to find that we have saved 9p or some such paltry amount against the other big supermarkets. Perhaps I am missing something, but I expected Tesco to do better than that and roundly beat the other majors into a corner on pricing. In my opinion that’s become their only weapon now because their quality has declined on fresh produce, they have de-listed numerous branded products and substituted inferior own-label products, they have too few checkouts open so long queues build -up, and the disposition of stock around the store is chaotic. Nine times out of ten the checkout staff have to be reminded to handover the button to drop in the preferred charity box.

Although we much prefer Sainsbury’s [the only convenient alternative in our area], their Nectar Card loyalty scheme is a pain with each shopping trip producing a handful of useless vouchers for things we’ve just bought or with unrealistic spend thresholds over too short a time span. I don’t like the idea of stores’ computer systems checking what we buy and calculating what to promote. I’ve always disliked the sneaky and intrusive nature of such schemes where they seduce people through the lure of a saving or extra points into buying something that might not be the best value product at the time or is stock they want to shift. Some of what we buy is not for us but for other people on an occasional basis so why should a computer decide that we shall need more of it by the end of the next week?

Perhaps we are not representative of customers generally. There was an outcry when Tesco recently ‘rationalised’ the value of their points so obviously a large number of people are very tuned into these schemes and go to some trouble to ensure they get all that is promised. Thankfully, Tesco have given them some extra time in which to crystallise their points, but that shows that loyalty does not come naturally to bastions of commerce; it is still a one way street and the customers’ accumulated loyalty can be discarded in a trice to avoid having to repay it with value.

I think that’s the right approach, Nermal, but I seem to recall that Sainsbury’s slashed the spend exchange rate for Nectar points not so long ago.

The reason I have held on to Tesco points is because they can be used to provide a discount on click & collect purchases – convenient because there is no need to wait in for a delivery. I have now learned that faulty goods cannot simply be returned to the Tesco store from which they were collected, so the scheme is less attractive.

Loyalty schemes annoy me because they inflate prices and if you don’t play the silly games you are wasting more money.

I wonder if we should be supporting brands such as Aldi and Lidl that don’t (I believe) have loyalty cards. I was very unimpressed by their early stores but know an increasing number of people who use them as supermarket. It would not be a convenient option for me.

The worst part of having a loyalty card is knowing that you are being tracked by the company. I have a friend who has worked in data aggregation for a few years and is now working on a project for one of our large supermarkets. We are planning to meet up and I look forward to finding out a little more about this practice.

I’m disappointed that your Convo has not attracted more comments, LJ, but give it time.

Bit of a fiddle these bonus points….

You get a coupon saying You’ve won 200 Bonus Nectar points

But you need to read the smaller print underneath that says To get your points scan this coupon with your Nectar card the next time you shop in store by the date show which is 18/02/18.

As has already been said, it is the company that benefits most as many will not read the smaller print. ☹️