Trouble brewing as the Clubcard / Hotels.com deal unravels

….. because, as is becoming clear, Tesco Clubcard has been playing very fast and loose with the real terms of this offer.

I wrote about this new deal last week.  On the same day, Clubcard introduced Uber and Hotels.com as new redemption partners.  Both claim to give you 3 x the face value of your vouchers.

Uber is ‘the real deal’ – a ‘genuine’ 3 x face value offer.

The Tesco / Uber page is here.

For every 50p of vouchers you convert, you receive £1.50 of Uber credit.  No catches although, for clarity, you can’t use it for UberRUSH credit.  It is only valid for rides in the UK.

This is an excellent deal if you are a regular Uber user and instantly makes this one of the best Tesco Clubcard redemptions.  In fact, the deal is even better than it appears because, as I wrote on Saturday, you can also use the credit in the UberEATS app to order yourself takeaway food.

How does the Tesco Clubcard / Hotels.com offer work?

Hotels.com is totally different.

The Tesco / Hotels.com page is here.

This was never a ‘genuine’ 3 x face value offer.  Hotels.com does not let you collect Hotels.com Rewards credit if you pay with Clubcard vouchers.  You won’t get any shopping portal rewards either.  Even discounting those two aspects, however, you would still be getting over 2.5 x face value for your vouchers.  In theory.

Tesco seems to have rushed this out.  On launch day, there was no mention of a cap.  Only later did the site change to say that there is a cap of converting £165 of points per transaction, which would give you a £495 voucher.  Whilst you can only use one voucher per booking, nothing stops you making separate back to back bookings of course.

The first problem is that, according to a comment on Tesco’s own website, you cannot use Clubcard vouchers to pay the ‘taxes and fees’ element of the booking.  This must still be paid in cash.  Tesco doesn’t tell you this.  If you convert exactly enough vouchers to pay for your room, you will have converted too much – and any unused part of a Hotels.com credit voucher is lost.

For example:

• You see a room online at Hotels.com for £150
• You convert £50 of Tesco vouchers for £150 of Hotels.com voucher
• When you book, you find on the payment page that the price is broken down into £125 of room and £25 of ‘taxes and fees’
• Because you have already converted your voucher, you are obliged to use it to cover the £125 room element, losing £25, and you still need to pay the £25 of taxes in cash

This is poor.

Here is the big problem though.

The Clubcard website does not list any serious restrictions on using the vouchers.  In fact, it says:

Check availability before you exchange your vouchers, as once you’ve received the voucher, we can’t refund it.

…. with the word ‘availability’ linking to the Hotels.com home page.

Once you have redeemed your vouchers however – which, remember, are non-refundable – you receive a link to the real terms and conditions.  These rules are here.

The exclusions are shocking as you can see.

This is just the list for ‘H’ – I have bolded the key ones:

• H Hotels
• Hacienda Beach Club & Residences
• Hampton by Hilton
• Hampton Inn
• Hampton Suites
• Hard Days Night Hotel
• Hawkstone Park Hotel
• Hawthorn Suites
• Heritage Hotel – Manila
• Hesperia
• Hilton Garden Inn
• Hilton Grand Vacations
• Hilton Hotels
• Hilton International
• Ho’olei at Grand Wailea
• Holiday Inn
• Holiday Inn Club Vacations
• Holiday Inn Express Hotel
• Holiday Inn Select
• Holmsbu Hotel & Spa
• Home-Towne Suites
• Home2 Suites by Hilton
• Homewood Suites
• Horizont Resort
• Hormuz Grand Hotel
• Horwood House
• Hotel 81
• Hotel Arts Barcelona
• Hotel Astoriahotel BLUE
• Hotel Brioni
• Hotel F1
• Hotel Formule 1
• Hotel Holiday
• Hotel Indigo
• Hotel Jen
• Hotel Motel Prélude
• Hotel PUR Quebec
• Hotel Ritz
• Hotel Russell
• Hotel Shangri La Santa Monica
• Hotel Sipar
• Howard Johnson
• Howard Johnson San Francisco Marina District
• HTL
• HUALUXE
• Hyatt Hotels

Pretty much every branded hotel is excluded.  The full list is here.

Even though this deal is only a couple of days old, complaints have – not surprisingly – already started to appear on the Clubcard website from people who feel they have been duped:

The site is great and the voucher discounts are good HOWEVER the list of exclusions is huge and the Tesco site does not link to the exclusion list in any way. It was not until I had converted my vouchers that I discovered the exclusion list.

and

Check the massive list of excluded hotels — including the major chains — before you get this voucher. I am stuck with it and can’t book anything.

You would like to think that Tesco will be offering these people a refund of their vouchers – there is no doubt that Tesco would lose a Small Claims / MCOL case in any event.

If you are planning to book a hotel which is not part of a major chain, and which is on Hotels.com, then this new Clubcard deal may work for you.  For many HfP readers, however, it just became pretty useless indeed.

---

Hotel offers update – April 2024:

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Want to buy hotel points?

• Hilton Honors is offering a 100% bonus when you buy points by 14th May 2024. Click here.