Exclusive: Tesco Premium Credit Card launched this morning

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• GaryC says:

  4 Jun4 June 19:11

  I spend a lot at tesco – groceries, gift cards, wine, tesco direct – probably £10-15k per annum. I think the card makes a lot of sense with this sort of spend, particularly as the MasterCard rate for places which don’t take Amex is pretty good.

  • harry says:

    5 Jun5 June 20:55

    Really? Going for £10K spend and making it look good (your Tesco points will be a fair bit lower than this because of the rounding down rule), you might target 10,000 points + 5,000 bonus = 15,000 Tesco points. (Just looking at your Premium card points, because you would earn your additional 10,000 ‘Clubcard points’ anyway).

    15,000 points on Premium card that have cost you a focused spend at Tesco (perhaps denying you savings elsewhere, but I’ll ignore that) & the £150 card fee, you get travel insurance included in that £150 which may carry a value for you but I’ll assume the insurance is a ‘nice to have’ but otherwise valueless.

    You pay £150, you get 15,000 Clubcard points = 36,000 Avios = £360 @ 1p (many would give a harsher valuation but we’ll stick with 1p).

    Your net ‘profit’ for focusing £10,000 of spend through Tesco Premium card is £360 minus £150 = +£210.

    If you had used your basic free [£1 = 1 MR point] Amex card instead, you’d have earned 10,000 MR points (=£100) so you might think you’re doing OK with the Tesco card. £110 better?

    However, by doing the simplest of churns, ie 2 x Gold cards (‘his & hers’) per annum, with the same spend to hit bonus targets, you’d have earned an extra 2x 9,000 (referrer) + 2x 22,000 MR points = 62,000 MR points (= £620).

    Suddenly the Tesco Premium card doesn’t look so good.

    Perhaps you are a big spender and could do the Tesco Premium card spend AND the churning. Fine.

    But maybe you have a 2 point Amex card (such as my BMI Diamond Club card or the Lloyds 2 point card [first 6 months]).

    My £10,000 spend in Tesco gets me 20,000 MR points (= £200) vs your £210 ‘profit’. Nothing in it.

    Except I am free to shop wherever I like (that takes Amex) and not ‘tied into’ spending £200 a week at Tesco.

    I guess the arguments could be made about the insurance having a real value etc, but – without a decent starting bonus (7,500-10,000 Tesco clubcard points) – the Premium card is a ‘miss’ for me, a complete non-starter given the spend you need to send Tesco’s way and what looks like fairly paltry rewards.

    • Genghis says:

      5 Jun5 June 21:57

      Good arguments Harry

    • harry says:

      5 Jun5 June 23:15

      Hard to argue with a genuine 3x, eg Eurotunnel.

      If there were a PFS (petrol/ diesel) near us, that would help change my mind – there isn’t.

      Main exclusions unfortunately include Paypoint:
      [7.Points will not be awarded for non-qualifying products, including tobacco or tobacco related products, lottery, stamps, prescription medicines, infant formulae milk, Tesco Gift Cards, saving stamps, in store concessions, Paypoint payments or for purchases of some Tesco Bank products. Other products may also be excluded from the scheme at the discretion of Tesco.]

      But most giftcards are allowed.

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