The best loyalty card IMHO (Tesco Clubcard)

Member Name: Fiver29

Product:	Tesco Clubcard
Date:	23/04/09 (155 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Money for nothing

Disadvantages: None

The Tesco Clubcard is the only loyalty card I really use. I'm sure most people know how the Clubcard works but here's a bit of a low down anyway, and my experience of some of the things I've bought with my points.

Firstly clubcard points can be collected in a variety of ways. Probably most people receive the bulk of their points from shopping at Tesco, or at Tesco Direct. Green clubcard points for reusing bags, and tesco petrol are also popular ways to earn points. There are a few other ways, these include Tesco Mobile/Home Phone/Internet Access/ Internet Phone, Tesco Diets, Avis car hire, E-on, National Tyres and Nutricentre all add points to your total. Finally you can receive points from Tesco Finance.

When you get your card, you also get a couple of keyring cards to go with it, you can give someone else one of these, and all their points will go on your account too. I gave one to my dad who rarely does any grocery shopping at Tesco, so it's not worth him having his own, but he does get petrol and some bigger items such as electrical items.

Once your spent all your hard earned money on the above, you'll find you have a whole pile of points, or in my case a small pile of points. Every point is worth one pence, so 1000 points is worth £10 in vouchers. However, you can stretch those point further by using the vouchers for Clubcard Deals, rather than money off groceries.

This leads me to what I spent mine on. When I first started collecting the points I used the vouchers for grocery shopping, and was really chuffed when I got almost 60% off one weeks worth of shopping by using vouchers and coupons.

But this is really the worst way to spend them. It's far better to have a browse through the Clubcard Deals.

Since converting my vouchers I've had a years subscription to Practical Photography for just £13, which has helped my photography skills somewhat and was a luxury I wouldn't have been able to afford normally.

I also spent £15 worth of vouchers to get £60 worth of tokens for entry into Flamingoland. This meant we only had to pay £6 to get into Flamingoland last year, again something we would have been pushed to visit if we'd had to pay full price.

This year so far I have put my vouchers toward the cost of a crossing on the Channel Tunnel, and just last night I sent away for a voucher for Thorpe Park (unfortunately I didn't have enough for 3, but every little helps {groan}).

The list of things you can spend your vouchers on is huge, and far to extensive to list here, but you can guarantee that you'll get better value for money than you would just using the vouchers to save on your weekly shop.

Summary: Check out the deals