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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 yesterdayWe 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.)

Comments (262)

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

  • Scottydoggiom says:

    This will be bad news for me as churning cards is my main source of points !

  • Maria J says:

    Hi my husband has just closed his Amex Platinum and need to decide what to do with the Amex Rewards? Which program is best to transfer to? Thank you

  • s says:

    no more churning will mean I no longer use AMEX. the sign up bonuses are a huge incentive – Will avoid due to the £140 annual charge on the gold card and without a viable way to earn AVIOS to make a 2-4-1 worth the £195 there is no point.

    it will mean plenty of redemption availability for those with lots of avios earned through work but the hobbyist looking to get club world or first flights on the cheap are out of the game.

    • Anna says:

      I wonder if there has been any pressure from BA/OneWorld? It would be natural for them to want to limit loyalty perks to the people who spend the most money with them, which is not the same as those who spend most money on Amex cards.

  • Rob says:

    I was under the impression that Avios had changed the rules and that – even if there was no WTP cabin – they pretended their was? This is why the BA1 London City ‘all business’ service is now bookable.

    • Lev441 says:

      Rob – I was able to do this using the Avios call centre a few months back – unless it’s changed since then?

      • roberto says:

        Avios would not let me use the lloyds voucher on Ba1 from LCY when I called a couple of months back. I hung up and phoned back a few days later and got the same news.

      • Genghis says:

        When I last checked you can price it up online.

    • Anna says:

      Yes – the system charges a notional WTP 40,000 avios each way for using this route.

  • Lev441 says:

    It’s the flights that use the mid haul ex bmi 321’s – mainly middle eastern routes
    From the top of my head it’s:
    – tel aviv
    – Cairo
    – Amman
    – Beirut
    – Moscow

  • MJT55 says:

    Can I ask a sort of related question here please? With the 10K bonus MR points for a £15K spend on an Amex Gold card, are these only payable if you “renew” (i.e. pay the second year’s membership fee) or if you cancel before then is there anyway of getting hold of this too? Hope that makes sense?!

    • Genghis says:

      The 10k bonus will be paid a month or so after your anniversary date so you will have to pay the £140 fee (refundable pro-rata).

    • Rob says:

      You get the points after 4 weeks. You can then cancel and get a pro-rata refund, so roughly £128 of your £140 will come back. As your Lounge Pass reloads with another 2 visits you may want to keep it for longer until you’ve used those.

      • MJT55 says:

        Thanks. Have hit target but still have another six months until renewal. Based on the original article it sounds better to hold on to it rather than cancel card and get a referral (for a bonus which may or may not exist) in six months time…

    • Grimz says:

      Wait till the points post around 6 weeks after year end and you get a pro rata refund on the £140 2nd year fee.

  • Clive says:

    Erm… does the referrer get the points bonus even if the referred person has had the card within the last 6 months and is ineligible for their own bonus? I had always assumed both bonuses depended upon the 6 month gap, but now I’m wondering if the referrer’s bonus doesn’t since they might not know the situation of the person they’re referring?

    • RTS says:

      Valid question. The T&Cs make no mention re: the referred must not have held the card in the past 6 months for the referral bonus to be paid out.

    • Cate says:

      I’ve referred MrCate from my plat for a SPG card although he recently cancelled his (Nov I think) and I was credited with 18mr.

  • Combatjohnny says:

    I guess I am probably in a much lower spending bracket than most people on this site so a change in the rules would definitely hit me hard. I haven’t even been in the churning game a year let either!

    • Lewis King says:

      Been in the game a bit over a year but definitely not a big spender by any means either. This would be very disappointing, but I have had one first class redemption to Mumbai and another soon to New York so I’ll have had my fair share of rewards if it does all change! The continued downward trend on prices for tickets is making reward flights less valuable too.

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