Loyalty cards - the new game in town.

[Workingman]

They are called "Challenges" and you save money if you spend more!

Apparently supermarkets will look at the products you buy over the month and then they will give you offers on them to make sure that you buy that product again and again - from them. The new challenges vary but involve shopping more frequently or hitting a spending target on specific products within a set timeframe.

You get bonus points, and as we all know... Points make prizes! However, they get all your data and know more about your shopping habits than you do.

I avoid cards because of the data mining, but also because the "offers" are not on the things I buy. They tend to be on 'brands' and non-essential items. I never see them on fruit and veg, flour, milk, eggs, fresh meat and so on.

[cruiser2]

I only buy things at supermarkets I cannot get at small local shops This includes tea smoked salmon and milk.

Meat and cheese and veg I get from stalls at Chorley. Cut fresh, Not wrapped in plastic for days/weeks.

I have a Tesco credit card as I do get some reduction when I shop there. But like WM I will not have one of the new Challenger cards.

[Kaz]

Frank, I have honestly saved a fortune since swapping from Sainsburys to Tesco's, and using their Clubcard.

[Workingman]

I saved a fortune swapping from M&S and Waitrose to Kwik Save - no card needed; and I paid cash so that they could not follow me everywhere. You, on the other hand, are tracked... they even know you are coming to Brum.

Covid changed my shopping habits. I only went to Asda late in the evening when it was quiet, but I also started using local shops and other places - a butcher for meat, more expensive but the quality... B&M or Home Bargains for cleaning products etc. The butchers will do me any cut of meat and in any size I want. They will also mince anything in fine, medium or course. I once asked them to mince casserole steak and kidney together. He just winked and said: "I know what you're making" and he was right - Mum's meatloaf.

The Asian / Oriental supermarket on my way home from B&M is a gold mine for cheap herbs and spices, noodles, rices and sauces. They are all at a fraction of the cost in supermarkets - even Aldi and Lidl. And when it comes to shellfish - wow!

[Kaz]

No KwikSave here, and if they want to track my sedate life they'll soon get bored

[TheOstrich]

:lol: I saved a fortune swapping from M&S and Waitrose to Kwik Save

Well, yes, in our case for weekly shopping Waitrose to Aldi.

I appreciate that Tesco Clubcard saves members oodles of dosh, but speaking as someone who used to occassionally pop into Tesco Shaftesbury to pick up a few items, once I noted the huge difference between Clubcard prices and ordinary prices and felt "rip-off" , I now no longer visit it at all!

Waitrose's Loyalty Card these days only really gives you savings if you take up their personal Weekly Offers. Because they tracked our purchases, the offers were invariably 50p off or £1 off products we had bought in the last month or so, and half the time they were on items we'd stocked up on and didn't want more of. So their coupons were largely a waste of space; I used them initially but I had the kerfuffle of printing them out and then the kerfuffle of going down and cashing them in at the store (they only were valid 7 days). So eventually I stopped looking at what discounts they were offering, and these days I don't even bother registering the Waitrose Card when I shop there.

Interestingly, Waitrose do seem to have gone back to special offers marking prices down in-store. Take Mrs O's cartons of long-life almond milk (yuk!) - normally £2+, I only buy if there's a special reduction on knocking it down to £1.25 or so - some weeks it's Alpro, others Almond Breeze depending on the offer, and we've not run out yet!

Because I still have a Bexit/Covid/World War II hoarding mentality and buy everything in bulk if I can, we're up to bung with most things, so I certainly won't be investing in a frequent-shopper Challenger-type card

[Workingman]

I appreciate that Tesco Clubcard saves members oodles of dosh, but speaking as someone who used to occassionally pop into Tesco Shaftesbury to pick up a few items, once I noted the huge difference between Clubcard prices and ordinary prices and felt "rip-off" , I now no longer visit it at all!

Wise man, they save you sod all but they do have you clocked. They know you better than you know yourself.

My mate, Mo, stopped driving during Covid so I sometimes took her to the local Sainsbury's for her weekly shop. She was all Nectar this and Nectar that, but when I went home to my local Asda (before its scheme) its normal prices were not much different from Sainsbury's Nectar prices. We are being played by these robbers.

[Suff]

I never look at my clubcard and I use a Tesco credit card because they gave me the highest limit.

Last month I had a look in the app as it warned me I had some vouchers expiring. I had £107 in vouchers which I spent on fuel.

I also save quite a lot picking clubcard discounted products. Sometimes tens of £.

I guess it doesn't always work but I tend to fill the car at Tesco with the Tesco credit card. Plus all my other travel and renting. It hasn't been too bad.

[meriad]

No KwikSave here, and if they want to track my sedate life they'll soon get bored

Same here

I do 90% of my shopping at Sainsbury's; and it's always the same things, and I really don't give a toss what of mine they track and how. So if someone (be they human or AI) gets a thrill out of my regularly buying cobettes and spring greens for the chickens and Sheba cat food for the cats; then bless them - their life is even more boring than mine

And the stuff I buy tends to be very similar pricing in most of the shops so may as well get the nectar points whilst I can - I use them for my Christmas food shop.

[saundra]

I just use Iceland home delivery it suits me
I sometimes use asda
Don't have any loyalty card if something is on offer that I like I buy it but other than that I don't worry about it