Oh no, not another card to carry around with me (Sainsbury's Reward Card)

Member Name: EazyDude

Product:	Sainsbury's Reward Card
Date:	30/10/01 (925 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Air Miles

Disadvantages: Not as rewarding as they used to be

For as long as I can remember, I've been a regular Sainsbury's customer. It's always happened to be the closest supermarket wherever I've lived. Just coincidence?

Why Get a Card?
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Being a student, I'm very easily sucked into offers left, right, and centre. In the good old days reward points were accumulated 1 point per pound spent. Simple enough. Each 250 points could be exchanged for a £2.50 voucher. Simple enough again. You could get bonus points by buying particular products, or perhaps combination of products. It seems only obvious that you can benefit from these points if you have a Reward card, and so I got one.

How do I Get Reward Points?
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Roll on current times... the Reward card system has changed only a little bit. Now the point accumulation rate has doubled. Woohoo! BUT, the payout rate has halved. Eh? What was the point? Now you have to accumulate 500 points to be exchanged for a £2.50 voucher but you do get rewarded 2 points per pound spent.

As well as befuddling a lot of customers in the first few weeks who saw big numbers and thought that they were getting huge rewards, I saw little change initially. I think I have only now noticed the changes that have occured. It seems that the offers that used to reward you with bonus points are not there any more. I'm not sure if it's just me looking in the wrong places, but I can't really see any products offering bonus points any more.

This may be argued as a good/bad point. The point may be that Sainsbury's have decided to pass on the bonus points in the form of a direct reduction in goods prices. Safeway seem to have done very well with this. Quite often their promotions are sold out as they are so cheap. Otherwise you get limited to buying 3 per customer, but I digress. In fact, Sainsbury's prices do not seem much cheaper (to me) than they used to be, so I don't kno
w where those points/pounds have disappeared to. But then again, lowering prices defeats the object of having a loyalty card.

I currently get extra reward points from using my Sainsbury's Visa Card, which doubles the amount of points I get within the Sainsbury's group. Using it outside of the group also lets me get points, but at a rate of 1 point per pound. This can be looked at getting 0.5% of your credit card spending back in the form of Reward vouchers. There are credit cards that offer better, but being one with no annual fee, it seemed a good choice. Remember, that you could apply and use it only within Sainsbury's, but that would be yet another card to carry around with you.


Redeeming Points
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I'm afraid I have to come clean and confess that I'm not quite up-to-date with what else you can get with your reward points apart from direct money off your bill. A quick inspection of their website (www.sainsburys.co.uk) tells me that you can get:

- 40 air miles
- £5 off eating out at selected retail outlets
- a free movie rental at Blockbuster
- £5 off your fuel bill
- £5 off your ferry ticket
- £2.50 off your shopping at Sainsbury's

I usually just get money off my bill at Sainsbury's. You can only redeem your points at your nominated "home store". This is the store that is closest to you, or where you do most of your shopping at. Money off your bill is simple and can be done at the till, but if you choose not to, you get a statement of your points at the bottom of your receipt. You also accumulate points at any store. Just beacuse you can't redeem them, doesn't mean you're not earning them. If you want vouchers to redeem for any of the above, just ask at the till, though they normally ask you before you ask them.

(Gripe coming up, skip if you don't want to listen). One fantastic offer that used to be on was spendi
ng yout vouchers in the Arcadia group (Topshop, Topman, Burtons, Principles, etc). Although only worth £2.50 IN Sainsbury's, these vouchers used to be worth £5. This was a fantastic offer and one of the main reason for accumulating so many points before going on a spending spree. Unfortunately this changed last year to only being able to get £5 off any one spend. What the policy is now, I'm not sure as I've been away).

Support
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Whilst I'm on the website, you can also check your balance of your reward card online. Which is neat. You can also just phone the freephone helpline number to check how many points you have if you haven't been near your home store for a while. They can also order new cards for you if you lost yours with loads of points on it and don't want to lose them. You can also change your home store easily here as well. All in all, quite helpful.

Conclusion
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Although I've benefited from the bonus points, the extra credit card points, and the Arcadia group, I keep thinking the time may be coming near to dump my Reward Card. The points are not nearly as rewarding as they used to be and it's an extra card to carry around. I currently carry only 3 cards around with me everywhere. My debit card, my credit card... and my Reward Card.

For those cold frosty days when I need to scrape the ice from the car. NOW I remember why I carry around my Reward Card!

Thanks for reading.

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