Boots advantage points

[STripleM]

Just went online to treat myself to a new perfume with my Boots points. I do this every year for Christmas (bit late this year) but it's such a treat. Present for me for nothing right!
Have £66 in points and the Chanel Mademoiselle perfume I want is £84. Happy to pay the difference. Yet I've just discovered that Boots don't accept partial payment with points. So I'll need to 'earn' another £18 to cover the perfume. Does that mean spending £180 in Boots? That will take ages to accrue!
Does anyone know of a way around this? Could I buy something expensive like a hairdryer , earn the points, buy the perfume with the full points and then return the unopened hairdryer ? It feels immoral.. but I feel hard done by not to get the o perfume I wanted. It's been a tough year haha

I'm sure they would be well within their rights to decline the refund if the points are spent.

Unless you bought online (distance selling regulations?) or the item was faulty.

@MattDamon

Can you buy a gift card and then use that to part-pay?

You can't buy gift cards with points.

[quote phishy]@BarbaraofSeville ex Boots employee here too. They would just add all the points back to your Advantage card (I believe).[/quote]
I think you misunderstood @BarbaraofSeville's scenario. There would not be points to be added back, OP would have spent points that were no longer hers.

If I understand correctly, as soon as you buy something the points are yours and available to spend. But when you get a refund you do lose the points you earned, rightly. So what happens if you spend points then lose them?

Ah, OK. I don't think they would do anything in that scenario to recoup the points. Not worth the hassle.

You earn 4 points for every pound on regular items (pretty much anything in store except prescriptions&baby milk), if you have children under five then join the parenting club which gives you 12 points per pound on baby items. You can also buy your toiletries such as cotton buds and cotton wool from the baby section so you will earn extra points but the items will be cheaper as no tax on baby items. I would recommend downloading the boots app as they add extra points offers regularly which will help speed up the points accumulating. Also see if your local boots is participating in the recycling scheme, when you take 5 recyclable makeup/skincare bottles/packaging you get to earn £2.50 in points when you next send £10. This is a new promo which came out last year and it was originally £5 points earnt just for taking the recycling in, you could do it daily so I managed to earn about £60 in points before theyre changed the rules.

The recycle scheme that wednesday32 just mentioned has double points for this January so 5 items gets you an extra £5 worth of points when you spend £10.

The boots card is by far the best reward scheme, they let you combine offers so you get xx number of points when you buy x product even when it's in a 3 for 2 or already on offer, some of the deals I've had have been unbelievable . How anyone can gripe about it I don't know.

This rule has been in place since day 1 and you effectively agreed to it when you joined, whether you actually read the rules or not.

Boots points might be more generous, but a lot of the time, the products in store are more expensive than Superdrug, supermarkets or discount stores.

It's probably cheaper to not buy anything in Boots and just treat yourself to perfume with the money saved by not shopping in probably the most expensive place to buy the type of items they sell.

I agree Boots is more expensive.

I'm constantly amazed by some of the cheap prices at Savers, how do they do it?!

You can rack up points quite quickly, look at the app to see what vouchers you have. I got 400 points for spending £20 on baby things the other day.

There is one on my app currently for £5 of points if you spend £10 on vitamins and £4.00 of points if you spend £20. Just make sure you ‘load’ them onto your card

@BarbaraofSeville this made me laugh and you're probably right! I do sometimes walk out of Boots with a bag of a few items and question how it's totalled £40 odd pounds when I know I could buy similar for less somewhere else. This was one of my first posts on MN - I'm amazed at how many responses since this morning. Thanks all! Just checked the app and it's double points all month as it's my birthday month so will see what I can do to get that Mademoiselle . Have a lovely week all!