WTH M&S???

[NowWhatUsernameShallIHave]

What have M&S done to the Sparks card?

Now you can’t ever get 20% but have to buy things to ramp up rewards which are in £ but only when you buy the from the category they send you.
you then have to convert it so that you can actually spend it.
i get the way it works but psychologically I would be buying more if I had 20% off a category or just in general as you get the reward right there and then.

Not a good move in my opinion

Over complicated and just not appealing .
The 20% off deals were enticing and I used to wait until they were launched to stock up . Won’t be bothering with this nonsense . Sparks in its previous incarnation did raise funds for charities too not sure how that will work now.

Sounds the same as Asda rewards. I only recently noticed if not been awarded any points for over a year despite doing regular online shops. Turns out they just give them for completing missions or milestones (which I obviously never have!). All
i can see on the app is to earn £5 for buying a delivery pass, no other options

I agree. I was waiting for a 20% off to buy some new jeans but I don’t know if I will bother now.

Yeah this is rubbish. Before Id bought loads of stuff with the 20% offers

But surely with nectar you get both. Prices of items reduced there and then, and also points building up to turn into vouchers you can spend

Well my offer is £4 for spending £20 on leggings. I’ve never bought leggings from there, wouldn’t spend £20 on a pair anyway, and £4 isn’t going to tempt me now.

Does anyone know if you can save up your rewards pot over time? I couldn’t see that information when I read through the blurb.

I think there is a short window of time to spend what you earn. I don’t think it sits in a pot to spend at your leisure.
£1 reward when I spend £12 on fish , I don’t buy fish in M&S.
It’s rubbish now whoever thought this up needs sacking lol 😝!

I wouldn’t mind if it could sit a decent length of time so as to save a decent pot to spend but the odd pound here or there with pressure to spend quickly is rubbish. I’ll need to look up how quick quickly is! Whatever, it’s not tempting me whereas I made good use of old sparks.

HA! Ed discounts are the best part of education. I just got a MacBook Neo £100 off due to my teacher iD.

I rarely had any good offers on sparks to make me consider buying anything before. I've seen quite a few SM reels recently about M&S clothing sizes being quite a bit smaller or longer legged than they'd bought in the past and compared to their size in other major stores so both changes don't bode well for their sales.

It’s an awful change. It’s all designed to get us to spend more and get less back. I needed some trousers so I have ordered some totalling over £50 which means I’ll get £10 ‘reward’ at a later date. I would rather have had 20% off and then maybe I would have spent more.

I wonder what impact this will have on sales? Not a marketeer but presume there's a complicated economic equation at play about spending habits... or maybe M&S just can't afford to discount across the board several times a year.

Personally, if I was in charge, I'd start the savings by ditching about 30% of what they actually put out on the shop floor; you can pretty much pick out what'll be making up the bulk of the sale rail in 2 months' time...

I just don’t think I’ll ever bother scanning it.

I’ve got a 20% off on fashion, home and beauty till end of May

I’m an M&S woman - short, a bit overweight, middle aged - I shop there because of the different lengths on trousers/skirts etc. But every year they seem to stop doing their core pieces for more trendy stuff - it’s like they don’t know their target audience and are trying to attract younger people. There’s stuff that looks similar to what my 24 yr old DD might wear (slashed/ruffled neon jeans, “parachute” trousers etc) but she’d never shop there.

Anything you do see there’s never any left in size 12/14/16 - all 6, 8, 20plus, long length etc. I’m in the west of Scotland and there’s really not that many 6 foot size 6 women going about. I mean, wear what you like but I can’t imagine there’s much of a demand in M&S for size 20 leopard print mini skirts! I don’t understand why they don’t see what is selling/what’s not and restock accordingly.

Shoes are the same - goth like clumpy wedge boots but the Chelsea boots I’ve been buying for decades no longer on sale - I’ve switched to Pavers.

Maybe it’s just me 🤷‍♀️

Rewards have an expiry date of 12-15 months so you could have a decent pot if you use the offers

I agree!

They trialled the new approach (at least with some customers) before Christmas when there was a ‘spend X get Y’ reward challenge, so they must have got enough data from that trial to consider it was workable with sufficient customer uptake.

I spend enough in the Food Hall that I was easily able to make the new Food Hall qualifying spend I was sent last week without buying any extras. So from that point of view it was worth it for me against future spend.

I also have an M&S credit card, from which I get reward points and ‘x to spend’ vouchers, so the two schemes run in tandem. I’ve got £9 left in reward vouchers and a £10 ‘to spend in food hall’ voucher from the card, and £13 from the recent Sparks spend to be used where I like in the shop. Expiry date in 14 months. That’s £32 off a food shop, or if I want to do so, £10 in food hall and £22 elsewhere in the shop. I pay my credit card off in full every month and have really appreciated the reward vouchers over the years.

I’ve always thought that having the two schemes - the credit card Rewards and Sparks - made M&S a bit of an outlier. It would surely be cheaper for them to have the one scheme.

I'm in the market for a bra and some summer clothes - 20% off would mean I'd head to M&S, money-off-in-the-future means I'm heading to TU or buying online

I was in the market for an expensive Jaegar jacket but if they’re not offering 20% off (the whole amount), it’s staying in my basket.

All the other mid-Range fashion retailers do 20% off so I’ll get my overpriced jackets from them.

That's true, when I shop elsewhere online there's always a discount code available, and I'm regularly emailed them as well.

The problem with my M&S - rural-ish Midlands - is that they never send enough of the sexy 'hero products' to dilute the relentless blandness of what the buyers think we middle-aged bumpkins want. Right now, the shop floor is dominated by the predictable summer holiday offering - pre-crumpled linen beachwear, boring tankinis and kaftans - with plenty of weird polyester dresses, and row after row of frumpy t-shirts.

ALL my M&S shopping is now done online, not because I'm a necessarily an online shopper (and God knows the website doesn't sell the clothes) but because my home store never, ever stocks anything I want to buy. EVER.

The long legged thing is true. I’m 5’4 (so on the short side but not really that short) and the “short” length are usually too long. So I’m not sure which giants the regular length and tall length are made for!