Tesco imposing the 30,000 points (72,000 Avios) per quarter cap on Clubcard earning

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• oyster says:

  28 Jul28 July 07:46

  Some odd replies on this thread.

  Tesco put that rule in place for one reason only. To protect themselves from loopholes because they’re too lazy and/or tight to put proper promotion mechanic limits in place. So they rely on a lawyer to draft a new clause and some minimum-wage spotters in the Clubcard department.

  It’s an immoral limit anyway, in fact I’m not convinced it would stand up against legal challenge. After all, it must be the only earnings limit in the world of loyalty/flyer points.

  Shame they didn’t apply a cap for salaries for inadequate CEOs!

  • Daniel says:

    28 Jul28 July 08:10

    A lot of credit card providers in Australia have a cap on how many points you can earn in a period (usually a year) – so nothing new here.

  • mrtibbs1999 says:

    28 Jul28 July 09:08

    This is one of the daftest comments I’ve ever read. What is more logical – a limit that impacts less than .1% of clubcard collectors, or a revamping of the computer system that costs an absolute fortune. Also, there is no chance this rule is unlawful. It is a term and condition in an optional points collecting scheme.

    Anyone who really knows how to collect clubcard point has a merchant account, a Tesco bank debit card and multiple clubcard accounts for the bonus points. Our fictional friend Simon should have known better!

• fiona says:

  28 Jul28 July 07:51

  That was some dedication in the first place. I bet Simon just accepted what happened as it was a gamble. I can’t believe everyone here with no sympathy for him have never played the system before. I admit to being one of those awful people during the famous double the difference days who ended up with a room taken over with all the goodies( though I never re-used a voucher). I looked at the virtual visa cards but have never done them as i couldn’t be bothered with all the carry on.
  At least Simon didn’t have a cc surcharge to pay.

  • Matt NZ says:

    28 Jul28 July 08:01

    I did this too churned a couple hundred 3Vs, but could rarely find them in London. I automated nearly the entire process so all I had to do was scratch the security code and then barcode scan. 🙂

    • Stuart McIntyre says:

      28 Jul28 July 11:19

      Would love to know more about how you did that. The effort to do just a few pay.com cards seemed to make it not worth my time…

      • JQ says:

        28 Jul28 July 14:12

        I wonder if he wasted more time automating the process than it would have taken to manually process them in the first place… you can easily write a program to access the 3V website and activate them then copy the numbers and access a disposable email for the CVV. The hard part is the scratching!

    • Guy Fenton says:

      28 Jul28 July 13:52

      Would love to know how you did that was well..!

  • Simon says:

    30 Jul30 July 17:00

    Thanks a lot for this, Fiona — I really appreciate it. 🙂

• Craig Vassie says:

  28 Jul28 July 08:06

  One of m’learned friends is of the (unpaid for) opinion (for a mate) that Tesco would lose if the matter got taken to court. Two reasons (1) they changed their t&c’s but didn’t flag it, nor get new consents / acceptances, and (2) they have ignored their own t&c’s by in many many cases awarding more than 30K points per collection period, whilst capping other users. No equality of treatment amongst the user base, etc.

  • square2 says:

    28 Jul28 July 09:06

    & you might get dumped out of Clubcard.

    Schoolboy error putting so much work in then going so far over the 30,000 limit.

  • mrtibbs1999 says:

    28 Jul28 July 09:10

    So for the sake of a few quids worth of clubcard your mate will go to the effort of drafting quite a complicated claim, turn up to small claims court where he either wins or loses and straight after the hearing finds out that him and his family members are no longer welcome to use clubcard. Sounds like a victory to me!

  • Rob says:

    28 Jul28 July 09:24

    Anything that has been in the rules for at least 4 years would not have a problem in court.

  • The_Real_A says:

    28 Jul28 July 09:27

    Im glad it was free advice 🙂 As i understand it there is currently no precident for redress in legal terms for loyalty points as its impossible to put a value on them. This keeps them out of the way of the Tax man as income + divorce sttlements etc… however gives little redress legaly if things go wrong.

• Tilly71 says:

  28 Jul28 July 08:11

  Anyone who collects Tesco points should of known about the 30k limit per quarter. They should of used another account to collect points to instead of just the one account, now 35k of points gone.
  Everyone who collects large amounts of CC points should also be aware that collecting from mainly one source like pay.com cards can lead to account closures and difficulty redeeming vouchers as happened to someone on FT, they went to convert into avios and had to call CS who advised them they could only convert to Tesco vouchers.

  • John says:

    28 Jul28 July 09:57

    You can send those vouchers to Hilton though who will swap them for hotel nights

    https://headforpoints.com/2015/07/27/tesco-clubcard-hilton-hotels/

• William says:

  28 Jul28 July 08:17

  Frankly milking the system to the level of the Tesco cap does take a lot of time and effort. There are clearly enough people doing it for the bright sparks to impose a limit but I’ve not been seeing a Boxing Day style scrum in any of my local Tesco to get the last one of these cards.

  Can someone explain why Tesco have a supermarket monopoly on Avios/Virfin anyway? Are they paying the airlines a fortune to not tie up with their competition? It’s a major incentive to keeping me shopping there. It does seem very unfair that Nectar is so inadequate

  • RIccati says:

    28 Jul28 July 23:19

    Most likely has to do with the disinterest of other supermarkets that sell, ghmmm… like edible food.

    There was a piece on BBC on how Dunnhumby division of Tesco was created and runs the Clubcard scheme. It is a business of their own and value is about knowing customers better.

    While digging to remember Dunnhumby name, I found the June 2015 news that “Google considering an acquisition of Tesco’s Clubcard division”. There are other bidders. With that serious play, the Clubcard can indeed be bought from Tesco.

• uk1 says:

  28 Jul28 July 08:24

  I wonder whether Tesco can be challenged here by Simon and others who have had points deducted. Without commenting on the rights and wrongs of what any individual does, what Tesco may have stated in their terms might be legal. But they didn’t comply themselves. There is an important difference between preventing people from earning more that 30000 points in a quarter than allowing them to and then confiscating them once they have been earned, To comply with the rules imho Tesco has to put a ceiling of 30000 on an account so that once that figure is reached no more are added. That I think might make the terms enforceable. However allowing a member the false reassurance of accumulating more ie continuing to spend but then confiscating them to me seems worthy of a challenge. In my view the minimum Tesco should do is alert members when they have reached 30,000 and warn them that any more qualifying purchaes will not be credited. Just an opinion.

  • polly says:

    28 Jul28 July 08:31

    I agree. An alert system like the mobile phone companies claim to have would be a good idea. Simon took a chance and lost points. He may take the hit now but lessons are to be learned here. Play by their rules if possible. We DONT want Mr T to stop this perk.

• whiskerxx says:

  28 Jul28 July 08:37

  Everyone should take this as fair warning that it makes sense to spread this kind of spend across different cards.
  Its unfortunate for Simon, but if he was savvy enough to spend that time making the purchases and processing the cards he really should have thought it through some more. The £300 limit (though not rigorously imposed) is well known.

• CV3V says:

  28 Jul28 July 08:37

  Actually, I think he is lucky – he could have lost all the points after admitting paying a tax bill. I have read (on other forums) of people losing all their points when they advise they are collecting points via a business route. The Ts n Cs state ‘The scheme is only for personal and consumer use. Clubcard cards and key fobs cannot be used for any business transaction or purpose.’ – interpret is as you will.

  Before committing to such a high spend do your research, understand that there is a limit – its widely discussed and known, and then you can split the spend between clubcard accounts.

  • Clare says:

    28 Jul28 July 11:34

    If its a personal tax bill such as self assessment then it would surely be classed as personal?

    • CV3V says:

      28 Jul28 July 13:19

      Agreed, but a £20K VAT bill sure aint personal use.

  • Ross Parker says:

    28 Jul28 July 18:35

    Tesco have no right to know on what you spend your 3Vs. As long as he was buying them on a personal credit card, it wouldn’t matter if he threw them out of a helicopter.

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