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Now MY Tesco Clubcard points get stolen!

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I have written a couple of pieces on Head for Points over the last year about people getting their Tesco Clubcard points stolen.  It is becoming an increasing problem.

Is it Royal Mail?  Is it Tesco employees?  It is difficult to tell.

Over the weekend I had this email from Tesco:

Dear Rob

At Tesco we constantly monitor all of our systems and take the security of our customer’s data very seriously. Our team have noticed some irregular activity on your Tesco Clubcard account and we have cancelled all your vouchers as a precaution.

We will update your account balance accordingly within the next 48 hours and issue you with replacement vouchers in our next mailing commencing in August. However, if you wish to use your voucher(s) prior to this, please call our helpline on 0800 023 4761 who will be happy to assist. 

As part of our ongoing work to protect you online we are asking you to create a new stronger password before you log in to your Tesco.com account.

[snip]

Thank you for taking the time to read this and we would like to apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused you, however we hope you can appreciate that we are acting to ensure your account is secure.

Kind regards

Confession time.  I have written on here before that because I use AwardWallet to track my balances, I would be informed if my points went missing.  This is incorrect.  Whilst AwardWallet DOES inform me when my current points balance moves, it does NOT inform me when my ‘unspent vouchers’ total moves.

This is because Award Wallet does not inform you about movements in ‘second-level data’ which is what this is.  You also, for example, do not get told if a BA Amex 241 voucher is added to your account even though it shows on AwardWallet.

I mention this because, when I look at my transactions, it seems that the first odd transaction happened in March and I missed it.  This is what was spent:

26 March – £xx – Andover

9 April – £xx – Prescot Extra

15 May – £xx – Aylesbury

The paper vouchers issued to me are still in my desk.  Someone had accessed my Clubcard account and printed off extra copies of some of the vouchers.  The usage pattern is a little weird, to be honest – why wait two weeks after the first transaction to do the second one (which was 10 x larger) giving me plenty of time to notice?

Tesco did a good job of spotting this fraud.

They did a bad job of explaining it to me.

If you look at the email, it implies that they spotted the fraud and refunded me.  This was not correct.  They did refund the Aylesbury transaction which is what had triggered the review.  They had NOT refunded the Prescot or Andover transactions and did not do so until I called them.  

To be fair, they could not be 100% certain that I had not done these – although it is unlikely as I have never used a Tesco anywhere near there – but the email should have asked me to check my transactions.

Additionally, whilst the email asks me to change my password it was not compulsory.  You would have expected Tesco to insist on a password change at the next log-in, but it didn’t.

I have no idea how this happened.  My password was not too secure but I know people with super-tough passwords who have also been defrauded.  You could try to point the figure at AwardWallet but there are plenty of fraud cases from people who do not use them.

As these vouchers were from my February mailing, it is NOT Royal Mail as I have the vouchers.  The finger points pretty clearly to someone at Tesco.  It is worth noting that the Aylesbury voucher was used after Tesco brought in its additional security checks although it is possible it had been printed off earlier.

There is some upside

Tesco is going to reissue all of my vouchers in August.  This will reset the expiry date on all of them for two years.

They were also happy to let me redeem some points for Thomas Land today so I am still able to spend points even though I have no ‘live’ vouchers.

Tesco answered my telephone call promptly and the guy I spoke with was very efficient in looking through my account and calling back when he said he would.  They did do a good job here.

Time to tighten up security further though.  Sainsbury does not allow you to redeem Nectar points unless you have previously shopped in that store.  I don’t think it would cause much inconvenience if Tesco went the same way.

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Category

Tesco Clubcard

Comments (110)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Fenny says:
    22 May22 May 08:24

    Just tried to access my account, but I’m out of the country and got the “You need to be in the UK to access your account”. A quick switch of browser and location and I confirmed all my vouchers and points are safely where I left them.

  • Volker says:
    22 May22 May 08:27

    With no conversion bonus on the horizon I am tempted to set my account to auto-convert. If I think of all the hassle fraud victims have had…
    I always thought the chances to be slim, but over the years the data of 4 of my credit cards was stolen – different banks, different card issuers, different countries.
    I think I better check now if I’ve still got my Tesco vouchers 🙁

    • Oly says:
      22 May22 May 09:22

      I agree, I am setting to auto-convert. I pretty much convert them as soon as they come in anyway

  • Will says:
    22 May22 May 08:45

    I had mine and my girlfriend (different addresses) done in march/April – all spent tokens were from the Feb 2014 statements. Also it seems that the thief is trying to be subtle as it was £50 at a time with a few weeks in between redemptions, the type of transaction that would show only a subtle change in balance.

  • Mikeact says:
    22 May22 May 08:51

    Problem could also be at the printers…..depending on the perceived security risk when the contract was awarded.

    • Rob says:
      22 May22 May 09:47

      Possibly. There have been fraud cases involving printers before – you see it occasionally in the City when a printer doing the documents for a takeover decides to go off and do a bit of insider trading on the takeover target.

  • RussellR says:
    22 May22 May 09:10

    Also £200 worth over a couple of days last week, refunded straight away, I asked how often this
    happens,they told me not very often.

  • swissy says:
    22 May22 May 09:14

    Well I have just checked my account.
    Over £140 was stolen in March and spent on Clubcard Boost and Greenford.

  • Ian says:
    22 May22 May 09:15

    I don’t understand why people sit on £100s of vouchers waiting for a conversion bonus that may never come, especially with all the publicity there has been over stolen vouchers.
    I’ve never had any problems with stolen vouchers because I always auto-convert to Avios. I’m still on an very old conversion rate of 50 clubcard points = 160 avios, and for me Tesco (and my old BMI credit card) is a major source of Avios .

    • Jonny says:
      22 May22 May 09:21

      The threat of vouchers being stolen shouldn’t be a “stick” to force you to convert.
      Its perfectly reasonable to keep £100s of vouchers sitting on account – it allows for maximum flexibility and the potential (though not expectation) for conversion bonuses

    • Oly says:
      22 May22 May 09:21

      Because people get their stolen vouchers back 100% of the time, as far as I know

      • Ian says:
        22 May22 May 09:59

        As long as you notice they have gone!
        And as long as Tesco are prepared to refund them. I would hope that Tesco are working to beef up their security as it sounds like this is costing them quite a lot of money. Once that is done I don’t find it hard to imagine Tesco taking a harder line on refunds.

        An earlier poster talked about a £50 transaction being a “subtle change in balance”, so some people are obviously holding a lot of clubcard vouchers in their account. – treating them a savings account almost.

        I’m not saying the threat of them being stolen should be forcing you to convert.
        What I am saying is that (like all loyalty schemes) you are exposing yourself to the whim of Tesco. Tesco are not a bank, and a clubcard account is not a bank account, Those vouchers are not cash – tomorrow them might be worth a lot less to you than they are today. You might be holding out for a conversion bonus, only to find they reduce the conversion rate permanently. You might be saving to buy something at company X only to find they drop out the scheme or change the face value multiplier.

        I guess everybody takes a different view on this – but to me it’s not worth the risk. Use em or lose em I say! 🙂

    • CV says:
      22 May22 May 09:35

      Its much better to keep options open on where to transfer points to, I don’t want to have a stash of avios I cant use whilst VS has availability and vice versa. Just look at the Virgin redemption sale that is on at moment, not much use if all my points were converted to avios. I also shouldn’t be penalized and miss out on conversion bonuses due to the criminal activities of others.

  • Oly says:
    22 May22 May 09:20

    Erm…. my award wallet does show updates to the balance of vouchers

    • Rob says:
      22 May22 May 09:44

      Unspent previous vouchers, not current period? I always use the app, not the website. This creates a list of ‘Updated Accounts’ at the top of the page when you do ‘Update All’.

      Changes to your CURRENT points total do appear here. Changes to unspent vouchers from old periods do not. It didn’t appear today for a start despite Tesco replacing my missing vouchers last night.

      • Simon says:
        22 May22 May 10:06

        The website version shows the total of your unspent vouchers from old periods.

        When Tesco introduced their new feature that you needed your clubcard number to login the website version stopped showing the total of your unspent vouchers from old periods but a month or 2 ago they changed it so you had to put your clubcard number into AwardWallet along with your email address and password for Tesco so the website version does now track the total of your unspent vouchers from old periods

      • Greenpen says:
        22 May22 May 10:07

        Being of an age that does not understand what an app is, I access AW online. It shows my current point balance for the quarter as well as the vouchers from previous quarters. When I use vouchers, almost always for Avios, the amount of vouchers exchanged is shown as well as the new voucher balance.

        It also shows ClubCard fuel save amounts and any changes that occur.

        • Rob says:
          22 May22 May 10:36

          It also shows that for me but because the app shows balance changes at the top of the screen I rarely scroll down all the way – I have 46 accounts on AW ….

    • Idrive says:
      22 May22 May 09:52

      apparently mine too. is there a way to check where the vouchers have been spent on the CC account page?

      • Rob says:
        22 May22 May 10:37

        Yes, it is under one of the options – although the description on the button does not make it clear that it brings up your list of redemptions, if you know what I mean.

      • TimS says:
        22 May22 May 11:09

        On the left go to “My Vouchers” and at the very bottom of the page it shows the issue dates of the vouchers you have used, the date they were redeemed & where/how they were used.

        • Idrive says:
          22 May22 May 11:16

          Thanks Raffles/TimS, found.

          When i wrote “apparently mine too” I meant AW shows vouchers etc, luckily i did not suffer any problems with Tesco.

          The voucher details on CC account shows only Boost conversion and the sum seems to be equal to the amount of vouchers.

          Though, I think i am not getting all the mail I am due and a Clubcard was lost…sent in december, applied for a new one….let’s see if that gets sent/received.

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