Give Yourself The Advantage (Boots Advantage Card)

Member Name: sandemp

Product:	Boots Advantage Card
Date:	18/07/05 (450 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Upto 4p for every pound spent | Lots of bonus point offers | Earn points in-store or online

Disadvantages: The actual shop is quite expensive | Can't check balance or spend points online

Have you noticed that almost every other shop seems to be running a loyalty card scheme? Some of these loyalty cards are little more than a way for the shops to gain information on our shopping habits, and many of them pay a penny (or less) per pound spent. But by far the most generous of these schemes is the Boots Advantage Card, which pays up to a penny per twenty five pence (or part thereof) that you spend in store. I’ve had one of these cards for what seems like forever, as I applied for it when they were first introduced, and have literally had hundreds of pounds worth of goods for nothing from them.

The first step in getting all these goodies is to apply for your very own card. You can do this in two ways, the first of which is to pop into your local Boots and pick up an application form, fill it in, send it off and wait for your card to drop through your letterbox (you‘ll be given a temporary card to use while waiting for the “real” one). But seeing as you’ve already got a web browser open, it would be far easier to open a new window and navigate to boots.com where you can fill in a online application form, although you won’t receive a temporary card this way. Either way don’t forget to fill in the organ donor registration form.

Once your card has finally arrived, it’s time to start earning those points, and it’s amazingly easy to build up a very good balance. You can earn points with both in-store and online purchases, although there are exceptions in both cases. Due to government restrictions, you are unable to earn points when buying baby milk or prescriptions and gift vouchers and stamps won’t earn you any dosh either. Points aren’t available for delivery or gift wrapping charges either, but everything else will earn you varying amounts of points.

For the majority of the products in store (or online) you will earn one point for each 25p (or part of 25p) you spend, so if you buy something costing £2.76 you will receive 12 points (each worth 1p). Other than the excluded items I’ve already mentioned, the only exception to this is the opticians, where you get 1 point per pound spent. Although you can quickly gain lots of points in just this way, Boots often offer bonuses where you might be able to earn extra points for spending a certain amount in one transaction. Or sometimes you’ll be offered extra points just for buying one or more of a particular item, they even have triple point weekends, where you can earn three times as many points for your purchases. What I used to do (before I changed to contract) was buy my mobile phone top up vouchers at £30 a time, which on it’s own would earn me 120 points, but then I would take advantage of their spend £30 and get 200 bonus points. This meant I was, in theory, getting £3.20 just for buying my top-up in Boots rather than the local newsagents.

Once you’ve started earning points, you will want to be able to check on your balance, which you can do in two ways. The first is that each time you present it when buying goods in-store your current balance will be shown at the bottom of the receipt. The other is by inserting your card into one of the many machines (they look like cash points) that are dotted around the store. The only trouble with this method is that these machines are often out of order (at least in the store I visit). The big disappointment is that despite being able to apply for the card and earn points online, you have to physically visit a shop to check your balance or even spend your points.

Spending your points is simplicity itself, simply go into your local Boots and browse the shelves. If you find a product that you fancy (and can afford) then check the pricing information on the shelf. If a star (*) is displayed next to the item name, then you can use your points to buy it. It’s that simple, well actually not quite that simple, you need to have enough points on the card to completely purchase the item. So if you have £9.99 on your card and the item costs £10 then you’ll have to use cash, sorry.

Now I’ve told you all about the card’s good points, so perhaps you’d like to know about the not so good points. The card itself contains a chip (like the new chip and pin credit cards), and I believe it was one of the first cards to do so. But the chip isn’t very securely housed in the card, and in actual fact we’ve had to have ours replaced twice due to the chip falling out. Each time it’s needed to be replaced I’ve had to phone a national rate number and it’s taken several weeks to receive a replacement. During these times, I’ve had to keep hold of all my receipts so the points could be added to my account once the card was received. The other bad point about this scheme, isn’t actually about the scheme as such, but is more a reflection on Boots rather overly expensive prices. In many cases Boots is not the cheapest place to buy goods, and I’m not so loyal to the scheme that I would pay too much extra for a packet of wipes just because I’d earn some points.

As I said, I’ve had one of these cards ever since they first came out, and what I actually like to do, is to collect points throughout the year and then spend them in the January sales. By collecting points on purchases (such as mobile top-up cards) that I would have made anyway, I find that I am “rewarded” with luxuries that I would not be able to afford otherwise. In actual fact if I time it right, I can actually use my points to purchase products that would have cost hundreds of pounds only a few weeks earlier. For me at least this means that this is the best loyalty card scheme available.

So am I recommending this card, well why not? If you ever shop in Boots then make sure you apply for one. After all, who can refuse goods for nowt? Not me that’s for sure, and although I know that Boots are obviously gaining something from me using the card (like knowing that I buy a top-up every month) at least they reward me with a reasonable amount of points for this information. And what do points make? Well in my case lots of expensive gift sets, but you might decide that in your case they’ll make that set of hair straighteners you’ve always fancied.

Summary: One of the best loyaty card schemes around