WTF - Tesco Clubcard Rewards and ferry travel

[Ilikecakes]

I usually stockpile my Tesco clubcard points throughout the year and then exchange them for vouchers to use on Irish Ferries for our annual trip to Ireland each summer.

So this year I priced up the ferry crossings we wanted at £441 and have £90 in vouchers to use against that - all good. Except, when I selected the box that said I had clubcard vouchers to use, the effing price jumped up to £585!

Checked Stena Lines for the same route and they were even worse. Normal price was £445 but the ‘Tesco clubcard’ price was £711 ffs!

Anyone else found this?! Not sure how the ferry companies can justify having these different pricing tiers for the exact same thing, with the only difference being the payment method. Also not sure how Tesco can call this a reward really if it costs you more to use the vouchers than they’re actually worth! Spoke to customer services at both IF and Tesco and both blamed the other.

Just a vent really 😂🤯

edited to add: I have used these vouchers in this way for many years now and haven’t ever found this before! Has something changed?!

Same for cottages.com. You save nothing.
I use Tesco points for Ask dinners or railcards.

This has been the case for a while; but the disparity is bigger now. Some places are an absolute con to use the vouchers - I think they see being included in the scheme as a marketing move, and don’t actually want people to book using them.

Thats really annoying. All you can do realistically is use them for something else.

Same for theme parks. It's only worth doing when you have enough to cover the inflated cost.

Utter pricks!! The ferry hack is the only reason for us spending any money at Tesco at all…..

Mind it used to be 4 times the voucher value? that was great, but long gone are those days. I find the asda rewards are worth more these days as its money off your shopping

Same for west miss safari, £80 if you book in advance plus you get a free return ticket or £115 on the day, but of course if you use Tesco voucher you can only book on the day and no free return ticket.

It's the same with booking hotels etc!
Really unacceptable

I’ve not used my points for any of these mentioned - just meals, Disney+ and, once, some National Express tickets… but that’s incredibly frustrating and crap!
I’d email Tesco to complain, I think they have enough power to pressure their partners to offer a fairer deal for customers and make collecting CC points attractive. The problem is these services listed are nearly ‘unavoidable’ in that they know the people looking to use them don’t have a plethora of alternatives and, one way or another, will book them.

Yep @evtheria exactly this. Those two ferry companies clearly collude to price fix at every peak time and they’re the only ones running the service so we’re forced to use one of them. We’ve always used Irish Ferries out of some vague and poorly researched notion around supporting Irish business, but it galls me when the reality is that there’s no consumer choice really. The only alternative for us would be flying and hiring a car which works out far more expensive overall, plus you can’t carry all the stuff you need for the four seasons each day Irish summer….

Anyway, ignore my descent into general grumbling now. Better get back to work 😂😂

We get the ferry a lot to France but I am going to Ireland this summer and was shocked at the ferry fare!

Could you use the vouchers to get money off your Tesco's shopping then spend the money you've saved on the ferry? What a con though!

@Janek The rewards thing works by doubling up the value of the clubcard points IFSWIM. So I have £45 worth of points that I could use to save on the Tesco shop as you said, but when you convert them to use with the partners, they’re worth £90. It’s good (although as per PP, nowhere near as good as it used to be when it was 3 or 4 times the value), but only good when it’s a saving off the normal price ffs - not a wildly inflated one!

I found the same with the meerkat movies vouchers this week. Without the voucher a seat was £16, as soon as you add the voucher the same seat was then £18.50

just checked hotels.com for the hotel i'm saving up for, identical price for clubcard vouchers and cash - could you pay for your accommodation with them instead ?

Has anyone tried to use there points with easy jet yet? Is this the same?

I saved up Nectar points to stay at a Holiday Inn. The price using points was double the cost of the room, and going half and half was even worse. It was actually just cheaper to book the room without using Nectar at all.

Half of these rewards type things are such a con. I just save my points and take it off December shopping when I’m generally spending more on food and drink.

I used my Tesco vouchers to book Le shuttle I had £90 in vouchers converted to £180 off. The price was the same, I did the booking last Saturday so maybe I was lucky. The price was £331-180.

The vouchers are that good of a deal with Pizza Express, I got a much better deal, using their deals in the restaurant.

Sorry I meant the vouchers aren’t a good deal with pizza express,

That absolutely sucks. We don’t use the ferry to France as it’s exorbitant for our Camper Van with tandem on the roof. We use Le Shuttle and the vouchers are deducted at the end of the booking process. No change in price. We don’t use Tesco much these days but what we get makes a little difference.

I used mine for the ferry for the first time a couple of weeks ago and it worked fine. I read all the T&Cs before I exchanged the clubcard points in case of any exclusions and it did say that it might not apply to peak times or something like that? But mine went through fine and I got £60 off the original price .

I've used them for Railcard, Spaseekers and Picturehouse - you only put the voucher code in near the end as the prices aren't variable - so maybe that is the best way to use Tesco vouchers, on things with fixed prices?