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Big changes to Tesco Clubcard – with no notice – as many redemptions dropped or cut in value

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Tesco announced a pile of changes to the Clubcard scheme yesterday.  We have covered these in detail on Shopper Points today – click here.  We covered them for The Guardian as well – see here.

In general, the changes are bad.

Some little-used ‘two times’ deals will now give 3x face value, but a lot more deals which used to give 4x face value are dropping to 3x.  This mainly impacts restaurant and days out vouchers.

Big changes to Tesco Clubcard with no notice

From a travel perspective, it is actually positive to neutral:

National Express, Megabus and redspottedhanky.com (train tickets) credit now gets you 3x the face value of your Clubcard vouchers, up from 2x

There is no change to the Avios or Virgin Flying Club conversion rates 

You have also gained Uber and hotels.com as new 3x face value redemption partners this year.  Uber is now my preferred redemption as we use it heavily and it is a genuine ‘3x’ value.  If I took Avios instead I would be giving up £3 of Uber for every 240 Avios I earned which means I would be ‘paying’ 1.25p per Avios – and I don’t value them at that.

To do this without ANY notice at all stinks, however.  It particularly stinks that we are just 9 days from the end of the current Clubcard collection quarter.  People have 10 weeks of points locked up inside Clubcard which cannot now be spent at the old 4x redemption rate.

How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

Nectar American Express

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

American Express Platinum card Amex

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express card

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

Tesco Clubcard

Comments (262)

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

  • Lumma says:
    16 Jan16 January 04:55

    Uber related. Had a nightmare with them recently. Account got hacked somehow and it was extremely difficult to get them to do anything about it. Kept getting cars requested and cancelled, sometimes getting charged a fee for cancellation. You can’t call or live chat with anyone, you can only message them through the app or Twitter.

    Changing my password didn’t help nor could I even close the account as you have to close the account for 30 days and I would just get an email from them half an hour later saying “welcome back” when whoever was doing it logged back in. The app won’t even allow you to remove all payment methods so in the end I was left with just Android pay on there and had to remove all my cards from it. I don’t use it that often but I’m probably finished with them now. Absolutely useless customer service

    • Cheshire Pete says:
      16 Jan16 January 07:08

      We had this the other year. Trips being made in China! Uber are awful as you state hard to block the account. Impossible to talk to a Human being. Your only option is call your bank of the registered card and block it.

      • John says:
        16 Jan16 January 09:41

        If you have Curve or another product which supports this, you can suspend the card on the app / website

        • Lumma says:
          16 Jan16 January 11:56

          You shouldn’t have to do something like that to fix the issue, especially as I tend to use curve wherever I cant use Amex. The whole situation has put me off uber now. Luckily with the night tube on weekends I rarely need to use them, they did come in handy in foreign countries though

    • Sarah says:
      16 Jan16 January 10:57

      I was charged £65 by Uber for making a mess of bodily fluids (basically saying I’d wet myself) in a car which did not happen. Looked like the driver had poured water on the back seat of the car in the photos provided by customer services. I’m wary using them now. I’m sure most drivers are honest but someone clearly wanted a little bonus that day.

  • Erico1875 says:
    16 Jan16 January 05:12

    Most of the restaurant deals arent really 4 times the value really. There are often codes on the internet at 30,40 or 50% off food. These often exclude paying with Club Card tokens, so in reality you wete only really getting the cssh equivelent of 2 or 3 to 1 anyway

    • Kathy says:
      16 Jan16 January 08:43

      Of course none of those deals ever worked on Saturdays, whereas Tesco CC vouchers did, so people’s mileage will vary.

      • Alan says:
        16 Jan16 January 11:01

        We don’t get many as we don;t often shop at Tesco but we always used ours for Bella Italia vouchers that we would use on leisure trips to London. Worked well for us but, I guess, we’ll have to look at using them for something else now.

  • shd says:
    16 Jan16 January 05:37

    I’ve not got any amex MR earning cards at the moment, just reached the 6-month anniversary since I cancelled last summer – so time to take action, thanks for the heads up H4P!

    From Gold, Plat or the various small biz versions, which card should I immediately reapply for now, and why?

    (my SO is sadly not prepared to churn cards after a bad experience with amex years ago, so I’m on my own with this one… )

    • Louise says:
      16 Jan16 January 06:23

      Gold and then do the Plat upgrade!

    • Rachel says:
      16 Jan16 January 06:35

      I would either go for the Gold card due to the fact that it is fee free and earns in multi currency points ie if you’re not sure whether you want Virgin miles, BA or another, you can chose with that card.

      If you know you prefer to fly BA then I would definitely go for the BA premium card, the 2-4-1 voucher is excellent.

      I have both those cards and would be happy to do you a link for referral.

    • Mike says:
      16 Jan16 January 06:52

      Gold (20 k) and then do the Plat upgrade (20 k) then make one referral (18 k) , the SPG (10K) also BAPP (25 k) at the same time, all cancelled with pro rata refund once spend target occurred (less BAPP held until £10K spend) – repeat every 6 to 7 months. With bonuses plus spend MR (17 k) , and bonuses for taking supplementary cards (6 K) that accounts for my circa 120 MR/AVIOS per year…..I blame Rob ! (Seriously thanks)

  • The_real_a says:
    16 Jan16 January 06:09

    3X on Red spotted hanky – this is great news despite their apalling app.

    • Genghis says:
      16 Jan16 January 06:52

      I’ve never really noticed them previously due to 2x. Are there prices competitive on VTEC trains? +£1 booking fee I believe.

      • Genghis says:
        16 Jan16 January 07:55

        *their.

        • Rob says:
          16 Jan16 January 08:31

          They were always fee heavy but those are proportionately small once you get into pricier tickets. Remember some TOCs have exclusive deals on their own sites though, and Virgin likes to do 20% off East and West coast for ‘new’ users of the Red app.

        • Nick says:
          16 Jan16 January 13:44

          I used to use redhanky exclusively with my Tesco points before they were devalued (yes, this is a move BACK not a new one!) and when they had no booking fees at all. I hate booking fees but will need to decide if I can justify £1 a go now. Maybe if I’m booking a few tickets at once it will be worth it.

    • the_real_a says:
      16 Jan16 January 14:00

      All i can say is that they have identical prices to trainline.com. as I usually search on trainline and then make the booking on RSH.

  • Paul says:
    16 Jan16 January 06:24

    I too have the grand fathered BA PP card. It justified the annual £450 fee for platinum card and I don’t churn Amex as s result. It loss would be a massive blow and would result in my cancelling both cards. £450 in fees is one thing, £600 is an altogether different matter.

  • Chris says:
    16 Jan16 January 06:30

    Is the gold to Platinum upgrade offer permanent? I’m eligible to apply for one of the charge cards in a few weeks again so trying to decide on my strategy.

    • Leo says:
      16 Jan16 January 07:36

      It comes and goes

    • JamesB says:
      16 Jan16 January 08:10

      It will be interesting to see whether any amex rule change is applied retrospectively or whether it will just apply to new cards issued after the changes. If the latter then it would be wise to cancel cards now to to take advantage of a further churn in six months. However, the former seems more plausible and Rob’s ‘advice’ is probably the better bet.

  • John O'Sullivan says:
    16 Jan16 January 06:40

    I generally use Tesco for red spotted hanky (for trains Newport to Paddington)and Evans for cycling. 3x instead of 2x for both. Good changes for me.

    • Chris says:
      16 Jan16 January 08:18

      +1 for the Evans vouchers,

      Its worth noting too that Evans will pricematch Chain reaction cycles, wiggle and the halford group too.

      • Mr(s) Entitled says:
        16 Jan16 January 08:33

        Always throught Evans as more expensive. Thanks for the heads up.

  • Mr Cinnamon says:
    16 Jan16 January 06:47

    Those of us who get 800 Avios per coupon will continue to do so I assume if there are no changes to the Avios scheme?

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

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