There's more to Clubcard than meets the eye (Tesco Clubcard)

Member Name: mosaic369

Product:	Tesco Clubcard
Date:	24/08/09 (109 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Vouchers worth up to 4 times face value

Disadvantages: Need to convert vouchers into tokens

A few years ago we did most of our shopping at Tesco's. Then, during the credit crunch, we started shopping at cheaper supermarkets, like Asda and Morrisons. While the total of our weekly shopping bill did drop slightly, often at the cost of quality, I'm not entirely convinced that the supposedly cheaper supermarkets are actually that much cheaper, especially if you take Tesco's big ace, the Clubcard, into consideration.

In the past, I think we ignored many of the benefits the Tesco Clubcard has to offer. We just used our Clubcard vouchers at face value once a quarter to save a few pounds on our regular shopping, which didn't really make that much of a difference overall. We didn't even bother using the additional Extra Points vouchers that came with the regular money-off coupons, dismissing them as "not worth the bother". I have only just recently discovered the Clubcard voucher deals, where your vouchers are worth up to four times their face value. This essentially means that a £5 voucher is worth as much as £20 for partner rewards, including days out, cinema tickets, restaurants, and air miles from participating partners. You can also double up the value of your vouchers to purchase goods from Tesco Direct. These offers are simply too good to ignore any longer!

My only criticism, and the reason I'm writing this review, is that I've found the process of converting my Clubcard vouchers into money-off tokens unnecessarily tedious. In order to convert your vouchers for days out tokens, for example, you first have to order them from the Tesco.com website. You can convert your vouchers in multiples of £5 denominations for specific attractions. If you have a voucher for £7.50, for example, you can only use £5 of that amount and the change will be credited back to your Clubcard account and will only be available with your next Clubcard statement. After ordering your tokens, you have to wait up to five working days for them to arrive in the post. The days-out tokens are valid for only six months. It seems to me, you need to be pretty well-organised to know exactly where you want to go and when so you can order your tokens well in advance. Sadly, we tend to do things on the spur of the moment, so this system doesn't work for us. It would be far better, if we could convert the vouchers into general tokens to be used at any participating partner attractions for at least a year for more flexibility.

You can also convert your vouchers for money-off tokens for specific departments at Tesco Direct, doubling their face value. I have recently converted £15 worth of vouchers into £30 worth of toy tokens. The danger here is that by the time you receive your tokens in the post, the item you were saving for goes out of stock, which is exactly what happened to me. Luckily, I was able to find a suitable replacement item, but not what I originally intended to buy. If you find you can't spend your tokens, I think you can call Customer Services and ask them to reverse the tokens and credit the original value back to your Clubcard account. But doesn't this all seem way too complicated? While I understand the need to use tokens for partner transactions for administrative purposes, I really don't see why we can't use the Clubcard vouchers online at Tesco Direct? I should be able to use my voucher codes directly during checkout at double value. Plain and simple. Why complicate it?

Despite these complications, the Tesco Clubcard is definitely worth having. The benefits for us are enough to make us shop at Tesco's more often now. I just wish they would make the conversion process a bit more straightforward and customer-friendly.

Summary: Worth having