Free stuff...can't be a bad thing?! (Nectar Card)

Member Name: jennikitten

Product:	Nectar Card
Date:	21/02/09 (137 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free stuff, accepted at a lot of places

Disadvantages: Personal information, not great conversions

I first got my Nectar card when I went to uni because most of Nottingham's supermarkets are Sainsbury's (or that's what it seemed like!). I had a local, a giant one, a petrol station, and a regular sized one all within 3 miles or less, so I thought why not.

You can use Nectar cards in various places like Debenhams (good if you're spending a lot on makeup) and also online stores such as Amazon. They have a ton of online retailers listed on their website, so that's worth checking out to add on to your cashback savings.

Some people are against loyalty cards because of the personal information given and stored. I have to admit I was surprised that logging into my Nectar account told me exactly which days I'd been into Sainsbury's and where! I'm personally not too bothered by this because if you have a credit report, then your information is being sold around anyway. If you really wanted to you could pay around £20k for a disc with most of the UK's personal information on, and many companies do this and swap each other's findings so it's unavoidable anyway. I have nothing to hide - if someone wants to exclaim over the fact I bought Basics tissues or 2 tubs of Ben and Jerry's then they're welcome to.

Using my Nectar card in Sainsbury's they send me offers through the post on quite a regular basis, giving discounts for things such as spending X amount of fruit, or baking ingredients etc. Occasionally I use these.

Although Nectar points aren't worth a whole lot, I have managed to rack up about £40's worth of points which I've put towards my shopping. Even though I don't live near Sainsbury's now, I'm thinking about putting the rest of my points towards a couple of cinema tickets which have a great trade in value. As you can trade in points for all kinds of things, it's better to check out the different deals to get your money's worth, or ask somewhere like moneysavingexpert if you aren't sure.

The one thing with Nectar cards is that the website and the vouchers all encourage you to save up for things and/or buy things you don't need to get more points, so be careful. It's not a saving if you weren't going to buy it anyway!!

My Nectar card is a good few years old now but has stood the test of time and has lasted well. I quite like the Nectar scheme overall and it's certainly helped me out when I had no money but needed to buy food.

Summary: Use it when you're buying something, don't buy something to use it!