in suggesting that the Marks and Spencer Sparks card is the worst loyalty scheme ever

[JackandDiane]

1. YOu have to activate offers - requires WAY too much thought and planning
2. I just want money off things I buy fgs
3. that fucking ' have you swiped your sparks card' is surely mitigation for murder?

Since getting a new phone I can't get the app to work. It just sits there telling me that my details are wrong when I know for a fact that they're not. I feel like chucking it in the bin.

The Tesco card is also good. I've just renewed my Family Railcard for £15 worth of vouchers (costs £30 normally), and I've had 2 years of a magazine sub for nuppence.

It's crap. Far too much effort required to get any benefit from it. They need to relook at the whole thing and start from scratch imo.

polyhymnia no, the main one doesn't but I don't tend to get the coffee from there. We also have a mini Waitrose within walking distance so I'll pick up a few bits & bobs and either drink it on the way home or sit in the nearby park if the weather's nice. I agree the coffee isn't the best though!

Our waitrose has three fucking cafes and a wine bar. If I want coffee I'll drink it at home

Wow your Waitrose must be massive!

I shop a lot in M&S for food, and never use my Sparks card either. My first offer was for free Percy Pigs if I spent a certain amount, which was a brilliant offer. But since then, it has just been pants. I always say I haven't got a card now as well.

I reckon all loyalty cards are a crock of shit

they're getting more out of them than you are, I'd bet my boots

this one is the worst tho imo- the offers are confusing, you HAVE to read-and remember- the small print

I'm a slave to my nectar card - I resisted it for ages even though I nearly always shop in Sainsbos. In the end I got fed up of my kids and one of the ladies on the checkouts badgering me about it, and got one

within SECONDS I was tearing round the shop like my arse was on fire, making frenzied mental calcs, trying to spend £3.50 exACTly on fruit and veg to get 500 points

that said I've had two sandwich toasters, a casserole, sundry bits and bobs and a fuckload of booze off them so it's not all bad

I also pretend not to have the dire M and S card on me. The robots inside the self checkout machines don't like this though and nag me about whether I've got. it in an infuriating manner!

They need to relook at the whole thing and start from scratch imo

this

every now and then I wonder if that's what they're going to do- staff in our local one don't bother asking if you've got one any more. I thought they might be burying it- this isn't the first of these threads I've seen, and you never see anyone saying owt positive about it

I imagine that a thread like this might well worry M&S. They share quite a core demographic with MN I should imagine.

Waitrose free coffee is fab with a toddler - I bribe him to sit nicely in trolley with the promise of a biscuit in the café afterwards! Well worth the extra couple of quid for a calm weekly shop :o

Yes, yes. M&S, are you listening?!?
I thought I had a useful offer the other week until I read the 2 pages of small print and everything I wanted to buy was excluded.

Nectar, on the other hand: all the nectar points get spent on treats for me, because I do the shopping all the time. I loooove nectar!

I shop online. I cba with dragging around rl shops

YANBU but the Anchor Butter one is even wankier (IMHO of course).

A million points to get anything.

Scheme now closing to be replaced - not holding my breath for it to be any better.

Not all bad though - finally gave me an incentive to buy Co-Op own brand butter.

When the automatic till asks me if 'I've swiped my sparks card?' I get irrationally angry. The name 'Sparks card', is shit and makes me angry too (I realise I'm an angry person!)

I also buy food there, I'm not even slightly interested in their dowdy clothing.

Muddha- I love my nectar card too- plus the fact points can easily be redeemed elsewhere (argos is a good one) and I accrued a lot of points buying from E-bay. The points on offer aren't so great these days but it's still one of the better ones, imo. And their petrol station is the cheapest here, which bumps the points up.

Years ago I made a killing when the Aussie miracles range had 250 points per item- this included the conditioner sachets, which were only 79p. So, for £1.60 I got the equivalent of £2.50 in points. (It was my favourite conditioner at the time too.).

Funnily enough, they vanished from the shelves when they realised the error- but not before I had made about £30 in points and had conditioner to last for months!

IMO it is a marketing disaster for M and S. I cut my card up when I got it as I couldn't see any benefit in it at all. If a loyalty card needs a complicated explanation then it isn't worth having.

100% agree, and I also posted the same on the other thread a couple of months ago.

Why don't we get MNHQ to invite the clueless person who designed the Sparks scheme to take us on in a live webinar chat.

I bet they wouldn't dare. If their boss could hear us, they would probably get the sack

It's useless. But the JL and Waitress ones are useless too.

I like the idea of the free tea (don't drink coffee) but actually in what world do I drink tea while shopping and why would I want to stand there after I've shopped?
Not bothered about newspapers, the Internet has taken over from them (except in winter when we need them for the fire).

JL - why can't they just add the free tea and cake to your card so you don't have to carry the paper vouchers around, which are inevitably out of date when you get round to using them?

I only found out about the app yesterday so am going to try that, but frankly you shouldn't need a smart phone, card and app to return something you quite obviously bought there.

Dire. They email to say offers but the offers aren't on the email like all other retailers. You have to try to log in which seems to take forever on my iphone. Then the offers bear no resemblance to what you buy - ready meals when I've never bought one.
To make it worse my mum (big m and s shopper) who won't do email so I had to set her card up keeps asking me what the offers are and I'm not trying to log in hers too. Absolute waste of time and ignores their elderly market who don't do internet. customer services was a nightmare with people wanting setting up on it - they had a staff member with an iPad in the end there.

I was sure I'd read something in the news about the lady responsible for setting it up and have just found this www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ms-loyalty-card-scheme-chief-suzanna-broer-departs-in-wake-of-misconduct-claim-a6795151.html which might partly explain the whole mess...

it is shit, end of. the others are not much better either these days, too much tweaking around with the Ts and C's but at least with the Nectar I can get a bit off the shop. that's all I want to do.

Sounds like your Waitrose has a proper cafe where you can sit down and get cake to go with the coffee

Yes, that's where I take my DC for the waitrose free coffee. It's a proper sit down place similar to costa/starbucks. You can to choose a lot of bakeries and sandwiches. And they even do hot food at lunch time. We usually just do the cakes though so not sure what the lunch is like. The cake is also a lot cheaper than the chain coffee shop near by. It's 70p or something for a little carton of waitrose fruit juice for example.