Sainsbury’s cutting weekly Nectar (Avios) bonus offers for some

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There have been numerous reports in our daily chat threads recently about a reduction in the value of weekly Nectar bonus point offers to use when shopping at Sainsbury’s.

Each week, Nectar offers bonus points on a number of personalised own-brand Sainsbury’s products via the Nectar app. These can be very generous, and at times the value of the Avios earned outweighs the cost of the product.

The system isn’t ideal, however. It requires the shopper to install the Nectar app on their phone and to remember to go into it each week to activate the current crop of coupons. In my book, this is too much ‘friction’.

It also makes the value in the Nectar scheme too difficult to see. Anyone considering a switch from Tesco is likely to focus on the headline ‘1 point per £1 spent’ number and decide that the scheme is a waste of space. It is hard for Sainsbury’s to promote the value of personalised offers when they are, well, personalised …..

New offers may no longer arrive every week

Sainsbury’s has confirmed to moneysavingexpert.com that it has made changes.

It said:

“We regularly review the promotions available through our Nectar app to ensure customers are always receiving personalised, valuable offers. As part of this process, some offers may be currently unavailable for a small number of customers and we apologise for any inconvenience.”

Not all members will receive new offers each week. You may well see this in your app:

References to ‘weekly offers’ have also been removed from the app and from the website.

Here are two comparisons of the iOS promotional page for the app – image c/o moneysavingexpert.com:

Let’s see where this ends up. If it leads to a greater focus on in-store bonus point offers then it would be fairer to all customers whilst also making the attractions of Nectar more visible.

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:

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

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

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

Sainsbury's and Nectar

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

Alan says:

23 Apr23 April 07:16

I only ever get rubbish offers of 10-20 points on about 6 different items so can’t see how it can get much worse – I’ve never received these mythical great offers in the past!
- Ryan says:
  
  23 Apr23 April 07:22
  
  Precisely my point above. I filled up with £40 and realised my nectar card on the app must not have scanned properly and missed out accordingly.
  
  My frustration was tempered somewhat by knowing an Egg & Cress sandwich with 100 bonus points would soon follow….
- ChrisC says:
  
  23 Apr23 April 07:32
  
  Ditto with me 1/2 dozen offers with not many bonus points.
  
  Even when I haven’t shopped there for a couple of weeks there were no offers to try and entice me back. No till spits recently either.
  
  And Morrison’s are changing their scheme as well next month.
  
  Soon we’ll all be shopping based on what we need to buy and not because of the points we can earn!
Alex W says:

23 Apr23 April 07:25

Amazing the number of Nectar articles for a scheme that is apparently worthless. What happened to Shopper Points? Is it redundant now that Nectar can be transferred Avios?
- Rob says:
  
  23 Apr23 April 09:47
  
  Shopper Points becamed redundant, effectively, when Tesco Direct and Tesco Wine closed, as those were the only routes to sensible monetisation – Google Adsense doesn’t pay much and it was very rare we could sell ad space directly on there.
  
  I don’t think it ever made up more than 5% of our combined revenue per month. Even now, with HfP revenue down, the inability to earn affiliate commmission via Wine and Direct means it still wouldn’t be contributing much.
Malcolm says:

23 Apr23 April 07:27

Agree – I was offered 5x nectar points if I spend over £130 and 10 points for a bag of parsnips this week!! I’ve been hammering the offers in recent weeks – suspected it was only a matter of time before they did this.
- Stu says:
  
  23 Apr23 April 07:34
  
  Ditto, our menu plan each week was shaped by what veg were on offer … now I just get 5x points if I spend £40 in store or £80 online, one or the other, not both. Now totally worthless as I’d struggle to bag 400 points a week. Previously I was clocking up to 1000 points a week.
  
  Back to Waitrose for our weekly groceries until Sainsbury’s sharpen up their act …
  - James says:
    
    23 Apr23 April 22:36
    
    Let me pass you some scissors so you can cut your nose off.
Andrew says:

23 Apr23 April 07:29

I always just burn Avios (via nectar) at Sainsbury’s so never really look at these bonus offers. Maybe that’s a reason they are getting rid of the weekly offers because they would prefer you to burn your Avios in store.
JohnT says:

23 Apr23 April 07:35

I much prefer the Tesco cash discount offers in store. No preselection required. I have lost all Nectar offers, long standing user but recent credit card (and waiting for bonus points? )
- Olivia says:
  
  23 Apr23 April 08:47
  
  Bonus points took a LONG time to post in my account for credit card. Had to chase once or twice but came through in the end.
Brian says:

23 Apr23 April 07:42

I noticed it about 4 weeks ago the 20 offers I get every week. the points value dropping massively. I was getting between 1000 -1600 points a week for a very little spend on things we normally would buy each week. 70 points a pepper. 100 points mushrooms 150 points oranges now everything 10 or 20 points at best but with the 1 or. 2 offers of 100 – 200 points to keep you interested
- ChrisC says:
  
  23 Apr23 April 08:05
  
  I wish I was getting 10 offers a week let alone 20!
  
  As to 100 points for a single item some weeks my half dozen offers would get me 100 even if I used them all!
  
  Really don’t understand the disparity.
- Gin and Tonic Please says:
  
  23 Apr23 April 08:28
  
  Exactly the same here. At the same time, I started getting some larger value offers (usually 200ish points) as coupons in my Sainsbury’s account. I was wondering whether they were actually looking to move over the system form the Nectar app to the Sainsbury’s site, which would be MUCH easier to use.
krys_k says:

23 Apr23 April 07:54

I believe the offers to have been an exercise in determining drivers of demand, specifically, how offers result in increased sales of specific products within a given demographic, whether that is personal to the shopper e.g. age or another marker such as geography e.g. distance of home address to shopping destination. This exercise would have been costly both in terms of resources to undertake and money spent financing the offers. Given this perhaps all the data that is needed has been gathered within the budget and hence the only offers still available are those that prove or disprove hypothesis so far collected and analysed.
Hardpack says:

23 Apr23 April 08:10

Before the Avios tie up, I had over 500,000 nectar points. Since then, I’ve moved as many as possible into avios each month and I’m now down to 150,000. Like others, I used to get maybe 20 offers a month, now it’s only a 5x points on a threshold spend. It’s a shame, it I guess it had to come to an end sometime. I’ve done very well with Esso though
- Alex W says:
  
  23 Apr23 April 09:21
  
  Nice!!