To tell M&S that Sparks is rubbish?

[Trumpton]

Just had a survey come in asking my opinion on the Sparks card . I hope they are wearing their safety gear !
It must be the worst thought out reward (?) scheme ever . I only use mine for the charity donations they give and regard it as their way of gathering information on my shopping habits rather than a way of rewarding me .
Does anyone like this card ?

I use it quite a lot, you just have to remember to set the rewards.

I'm not a fan, the custom offers never seem to last very long..or they're right before payday, so I can't buy new lingerie even with 20% off as I'm skint...but then payday rolls around and the offer expires!

I will only use the foodhall now due to safety concerns they don't care about in their changing rooms, they only care about men.

TurningWood What's that about please?

Even the staff say the offers are rubbish.

So YANBU.

Agree its complicated! Its all this logging on and setting the rewards. I am a member of the M&S Premimum Club. its £20 a month but I get travel insurance for the family (which I have used a number of years ago so know its good!) and various offers over the year including nearly 50 coffee vouchers and extra points when I use the M&S card in M&S!

Three times a year my points are automatically converted into vouchers and sent to me. Get about £150 per year. I can use them on anything in the store. I do try and save them and use them during the 20% off offer as well. I do wonder how many are actually redeemed.

Randomly they give me £10 off beauty and clothes etc a few times a year with no minimum spend so I use the voucher quickly to buy say a L'occuitane handcream using a 20% off voucher too.

But the Sparks is rubbish!

I find even when you select your offers they don't even go through when you're in the store. It's totally rubbish.

Don't have the card but am a share holder. Have the minimum amount of shares and get perks such as free cake and coffee etc.

Yes as pp's have said, find the logging on annoying, find the random offers useless, the good offers don't last or are at the wrong time, and between my mum, sister and I we see who gets what offers and share/can't understand why one of us gets something good and the other gets 20%of carrots or something useless.

They send you a nice birthday present! I got £10 to spend on socks and tights

.....a birthday present . Seriously? I've never had one!
Sparks is crap, it's so they can following buying trends (as are all the others). Ok, occasionally there's 20% off but, like others have said, it's short-lived.

They won't let you have two card holders - we have 2x food halls near where we live & end up buying a fair bit from them, I gave my DH my card about three months ago, forgot to get it back & every single time since have only remembered at the till. FFS, have two cards for one account for all the other oyalty cards - we've got Tesco, Nectar, Waitrose and Co-op, all with cards and keyfobs, but not Sparks. Also haven't seen any benefit of getting it and I got it as soon as it came out so yep, totally agree OP, it is a bag of shite.

I've used the offers occasionally but it's annoying as they appear without much notice and it's usually a week when I'm not going near the shops!

I really like it. I've the app on my phone so don't do any logging in or out. Sometimes the offers are a bit rubbish but generally they're good. I've got £5 off jeans and just used it. I also think their food offers are great; I've currently got 20% off all fruit and veg and bread. Dead handy for me. I'm definitely a fan.

I never get a birthday present! Totally agree OP - it's rubbish. I have over 76,000 points - what use are they? Haven't a clue what I'm supposed to do with them.

It irritates me too. Why can't you just accrue points that you can actually spend, like a normal loyalty card?

It’s shit. I gave up as the offer would be on the card, show on the till but not take the discount. Get sent to CS who’d phone Sparks to be to,d nothing could be done as they didn’t know why it wasn’t working. Was promised feedback in each case. It’s telling that Sparks have a separate (crap) customer service division to M&S.

I've just filled in the survey and agree with the general opinion here.
I said it was the worst loyalty scheme on the high street- the offers were random, irrelevant, ill-timed and short lived. I mean, who is going to make a special trip into town to get 10% off a Mexican ready meal. Who wants 5% off if they spend a tenner on yoghurt in the next 7 days? I did once get a tenner off a coat but i think that is the only time it has ever been useful.
I just want to save points and get M&S vouchers to spend on what I like, when I like.

I listed all the ways the scheme is crap when I completed my survey recently. Why on earth can't they just put the offers on your card automatically?!!!! And what on earth are the 50 trillion points I've accumulated for exactly?

Aagghh, I picked up a card yesterday. They always ask me at the till if I have one so yesterday I thought why not, it must be good if so many people have them. I'm going to be disappointed aren't I... 😳

SluttyButty yup !

@frasier as it's Mumsnet i'm getting the PP means Trans people are allowed to get changed in the women's changing rooms or they have unisex changing rooms

I have one but soon stopped carrying it in my bag when I realised it wasn’t worth it.

I chopped mine up because it was an utter waste of time; none of the offers seemed to include the kind of things I regularly purchase and when I DID try to use it, my offers didn’t show up. I seemed to have loads of points and nowt I could use them on. When I get to the til and they ask me for it, I tell them I chopped it two. And why.