How crap is Boots Advantage Card?

[hexsnidgett]

The ridiculous rule where you have to have enough points for a whole item!
I have £10 worth of points, but got no discount off my £40 bill.

I mainly shop online and my card doesn’t work online as it claims my date of birth is wrong. No one seems to be able to do anything about it.

I think it's amazing! I currently have just over £116 of points. I'm doing their 'scan to recycle' where I put 5 items to recycle in their recycling box and when I spend £10, I get 500 points (£5). I recently bought my daughter a bottle of perfume from there which is priced the same as other retailers, but it had 20% off and because I spent over £70, I got 700 points (£7), plus another £5 of points for recycling 5 items.

Basic customer service?

You're doing Nectar wrong! We earn about £400 a year using it.

The Boots local to me was getting really drab and the range stocked was getting smaller and smaller. They closed to have a refit, I was actually looking forward to exploring the new store and ranges. Was gutted when I went, they had actually cut the size of the stock even more and just installed self service tills.

Agree that it just doesn’t have the range of somewhere comparable like Superdrug. I will stink up for the No7 range though, I really like some of the foundations.

I do like Boots but agree with PP that the app is poor. I load offers and they never go through. I lost loads once and contacted customer service but it was very long-winded to do so. I've definitely lost lots more since because the app doesn't process the offers I load. Very annoying.

How do you do Nectar right then? I buy all Sainsbury's purchases on a Sainsbury's credit card. What else should I be doing?

I use mine every time I go into Boots. When they started the Advantage Card I was pregnant with my son who's 27. They trialled it in some areas... One of which was near me. The lady in our local Boots says my card belongs in a museum!!!

It's easy done. If you know you have £10 worth of points, just ask the cashier to put through a couple of items separately so you can pay for them with points.

I love my Advantage card, and earn a lot on it.

How do you do that?! I must take advantage of the 10% off in Iceland on Tuesdays and the soup/roll/cuppa in Asda for £1!!

I used to shop 3 for 2 for Christmas when my children got presents for teachers and their friends. I went on the Christmas shopping evenings when there were double (or was it triple?) points.

I used to build up so many points that way!! A couple of years I went to the sale on Boxing Day, and one time I walked away with 5 perfume gift sets, mostly Marc Jacobs, without spending a penny!!

I'm so pissed off at Tesco Clubcard!! Used to be x4 for some offers, and x3 for others. x2 is rubbish.

I got so fed up with the barrage of different offers and discounts and extra points deals that I gave up shopping at Boots. It would take me half a hour to work out how to get the best discount, and just made me feel the whole chain was a rip off.

I've not heard of this recycle thing, and I daren't go looking on their website as I'll be hours waiting for it to load. They really need to invest in that.

I’ve been through times when I’ve used my advantage card loads. When I was pregnant with DC1, I spent about £600 in one go on baby stuff on their ‘spend £50 and get £10 worth of points’ evening and I did multiple transactions so got loads of points.

And when I was buying high end skincare and make up regularly, I accumulated loads of points too.

Id frequently have about £70 to spend each year, and I’d always spend it entirely on myself. I’ve bought really nice hairbrushes, and electric toothbrush, skincare, candles, toilet bag etc.

These days, I accumulate maybe £20 in points every year, and I always buy myself some make up. I had a nars tinted moisturiser last year, a nars lip crayon the year before etc.

It's a sroerate website Scan2Recycle

You upload photos of the products you're recycling, they will approve or reject and you take them to a participating store (not every store has it) they have a box with a QR code that you scan and then deposit your items. You'll then get a barcode, you need to spend £10 within 2 days of recycling and when you scan the barcode you'll get the extra points.

You can only get one barcode a day so if I have more products one month I'll do several visits and split my shopping over those trips.

Get the Nectar app. Every week they send you a new set of offers that give you extra Nectar points if you buy the stuff that you buy often, so if you always buy Sainsbury's custard creams or cauliflowers or the Radio Times then you'll get eg 10/30/50 extra Nectar points when you buy them again. Plus Fruit and veg challenges / count down to Xmas challenges which will be another few hundred points a year . Plus the odd 10/15/20 free points every week when you open the app.

I get far far more points from the bonus offers than I do for the teeny regular 1 point per quid spent or whatever it is, and it's honestly no effort whatsoever to log onto the app once a week.

Make sure you have the app to get bonus points on stuff you buy regularly (e.g. I've got products with 800+ bonus points in my delivery tomorrow). Link to eBay / Argos / Tu Clothing. Maximise offers where you can earn more points (like the fruit and veg challenge).

We don't even spend huge amounts and earn loads of points.

@mayorofcasterbridge
https://www.boots.com/shopping/over60s

Here you go …

From day one you can only buy something for the amount that you have on the card (or less). That’s been probably about 25 odd years or more.

They whipped all my points off me because I hadn't used my card in a year.

I won't be shopping there again.

I can’t find myself complaining about getting free loyalty points

No, they haven't.

See women's fragrances, women's vitamins...

That's part of the basic T&C's. It's not their fault you didn't pay attention.

I use the nectar app all the time and between bonus points, countdown to Christmas, veg challenge etc they soon add up. I should have almost £450 worth by Christmas and I use it on pyjamas for anyone staying over Christmas Eve, all sweets and chocolates for gifts plus a few gifts from Argos.

I’ll take Boots over Superdrug any day. There’s a huge brand new Superdrug in Manchester Arndale, enormous twice the size of the previous store and yet they have NO self checkouts and usually just 2 staff on the tills and a queue a mile long despite there being about 10 tills.

Boots however, is a delight plus my Advantage points fill up very quickly using the app with the offers.

M&S Sparks though is absolute crud.

Oh, thanks. I have got the Nectar app just lazy about checking it that often.