All right as a back-up credit card, but not to be counted on generally (Nectar Card)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Nectar Card
Date:	25/10/09 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Has an all-right rewards system attached to it, and no annual fee. Most supermarkets accept it.

Disadvantages: American Express is rejected by retailers all around the world

American Express? That defintely won't do nicely. It's a credit card that in my experience is universally rejected almost everywhere, in countries all around the globe. Admittedly, I most often try using mine at shops and hotels and payment and point and so on in England -

"You don't by any chance accept American Express cards, do you?" I'll say,

and then the person operating the till I'm trying to pay for goods or services at more often than not will look at me as if I've just said something horribly rude to them, before replying:

"American Express? We most certainly do NOT,"

but I've taken it abroad on holiday a few times and almost nobody accepts it there either. Maybe America is the only country it'll be any real use.

HOWEVER.

Although it's something of a niche-use credit card is does have several advantages. Firstly there's no annual fee. Secondly, although most independent retailers won't accept it (the fees that American Express charge retailers are too high, they tell me) most of the big supermarkets (e.g. Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys, Morrisons) do. And thirdly the one I've got - the Nectar Card version, is a (admittedly, rather poorly-performing) 'rewards'-type card. In general, for every £1 you spend on it, you get one Nectar point - although in certain places such as Sainsbury's supermarket, and possibly BP the petrol station, the 'reward' is 2 points per quid spent. On top of all this, if you spend £500 on the card in any one month - extremely tricky in a normal month, I find, this - since American Expres is accepted in so very few of the places I routinely shop - they double the number of points you get in total, which is a pretty good deal I suppose.

What you spend all your accumulated Nectar points on is another story. The Nectar points to useful rewards ratio, I find, is in general pretty pathetic - for example you seem to need redeem hundreds, or even possibly by now it's thousands of your Nectar points even to get something as non-exciting as say £2.50 off your shopping at 'Argos'. This applies for everything other than Vue cinema tickets, which are the single worthwhile redemption option that I use my collected points for. If Vue cinemas stopped accepting Nectar points in return for free cinema tickets, personally I'd put this card in the bin.

You can pay your Nectar credit card bill online by bank-account transfer, or over the phone. There tends to be quite a time-lag - more than 24 hours - between your using the credit card in payment for something, and that item appearing on your bill, which is something to bear in mind if you want to clear off your total balance at the end of each month. This may be because the accounts are operated from within the USA - that's certainly where they were sending my paperwork from, when I still received paper copies of my bills by post.

There is also an alternative option to view your accout details / American Express bill online but I find this horrendously time-consuming to use as each person's username / password allocation comes from American Express itself - rather than being something one self-selects. This means that in practice I have to contact the company every time I want to log on to the website to get email reminders of my username / password, because I have no idea what either are. (And I think in practice this means I've still never yet successfully accessed my online billing details).

But it's all right as a credit card, if you pay it all off monthly, and are using it to buy things you'd otherwise be paying cash for anyway.

Summary: An all-right points-awarding credit card