Boots Advantage Card - Everyone should have one! (Boots Advantage Card)

Member Name: Mrs-LT

Product:	Boots Advantage Card
Date:	29/01/09 (143 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 4 points for every pound you spend! Fantastic!

Disadvantages: Boots can be more expensive than other shops for lots of products and the points don't change this

The Boots Advantage Card is a staple in most people's wallets. All of my friends have one...my mum would have one too but instead she gets all of her receipts validated so that I can have the points on my card - how generous.

The card itself is a very very pale pink (almost white) colour and looks like a credit card. It has a chip which goes into the card readers in the same was as Chip and Pin cards do. It has your name and advantage card number in black on the bottom left and the Advantage Card logo in pink on the bottom right, with the navy and white Boots logo in the centre.

It is a loyalty card that rewards purchases in store and on Boots.com with points. These points can then be used to purchase anything in the store, and 1 point = 1p. It does not have a credit facility.

There is not a bad word I can say about the card. It is quick and easy to apply for, either by paper or online and no committment is required. It is one of the few loyalty cards that does not require you to have a credit facility - it just rewards you for every penny you spend in store.

You get 4 points for every pound you spend, on a pro rata basis so you do not have to spend whole pounds to get points - i.e. a 75p bar of chocolate would earn you 3 points. It is apparently the most generous loyalty card in the UK, although I cannot say this from personal experience as it is the only one I have.

If you lose your card, as I have done many times, they send you another one very quickly with all the points that were on your old card re-credited onto your new one.

You can get a Boots magazine free every so often too, whereas non-cardholders have to pay £1 or so for it.

You occasionally get sent offers through the post (though this is extremely rare in reality) and you can also go to an Advantage Card Point in larger Boots stores where you can take advantage of special offers exclusively for cardholders. They are bright pink machines with a touch screen that you insert your card into and you can read the available offers and print any vouchers off that you want to use. You can also check your points balance at these machines.

If you order anything from Boots.com and you login with your Advantage Card details, 5 days after the goods are dispatched you simply take your card to one of the Advantage Card Points and the points you earned for your online purchase will be instantly credited. The best thing I found is that when I placed an order for £100 on Boots.com and forgot to enter my card details, all I had to do was give the online customer services a quick low-rate call and they instantly credited my card with them....despite it being my own fault for forgetting to log in as a cardholder.

Almost everything you buy from Boots earns advantage points. The only exception I can think of is infant formula milk, and this is not Boots' decision it is the government's as it is classed as promoting formula feeding (which is not allowed).

The best thing for parents is that you can register for Boots Parenting Club, get a voucher to validate your card and then you receive double points on all Boots and Pampers baby products.

The only downside is more with Boots itself than the card. It is far more expensive to buy products such as shower gel, shapoo and conditioner from Boots than from supermarkets, nine times out of ten even when Boots has them on special offer! So don't fall into the trap of buying everything from Boots in order to get the points, as the points will not make up for the inflated prices Boots often charge.

As long as you shop around for products and only buy from Boots when they offer the best prices then this card is fantastic! It is especially good for premium brand makeup (Estee Lauder, Dior etc.) as they are priced the same in every shop yet in Boots you get the added points bonus.

Summary: Happy Shopping!