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LNER ending the redemption of Nectar points for rail vouchers

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On 1sts August, East Coast rail company LNER announced that it was dropping Nectar as an ‘earn’ partner. It was, however, remaining as a ‘spend’ partner.

This deal is now ending too. From 30th November, you will no longer be able to redeem Nectar points for LNER e-vouchers.

I’m not sure what the reasoning is here. There is presumably some overhead involved (I am guessing LNER does not get £10 if you buy a £10 e-voucher) but it may drive some incremental business. The company may just be looking for a clean break.

From the customer point of view, it doesn’t make any difference. LNER has run the occasional ‘double up’ offer in the past, giving you 1p instead of 0.5p per Nectar point. I usually redeemed my Nectar points during these periods as I use LNER a couple of times per year.

For the other 95% of the time, LNER is no better than any other Nectar partner in offering you 0.5p per point.

Any e-vouchers ordered now will be valid for 12 months from the conversion date.

You can find out more on the LNER site here.

Comments (38)

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  • Alex says:

    Wouldering if there is any way to extend liner vouchers ? E.g. book refundable ticket ? Or something like that ?

    Have 400 pounds in vouchers expiring in months after nectar conversion last year , but dont have any train travel plans because of current situation

    • sloth says:

      contact them on twitter…

    • Gaffa says:

      Yes you can!! Just buy a ticket, click refund straightaway & you’ll get a new voucher, with the expiry date a year from the date you click refund. Im not au fait with which tickets are refundable for free, but worst case you lose £10 admin fee 🙂

      • PerkyPat says:

        They seem to be refunding pretty much any ticket at the moment, just say unable to travel due to Covid….

        • BJ says:

          Does this include Advance Tickets? These are the only type of tickets that can be purchased with vouchers issued via Nectar points. Normally you have to book a new ticket first and then request a refund minus £10 on the existing ticket.

          Some reported voucher extensions of 6 or 12 months via twitter. However, I have requested extensions four times and my request has been denied each time. They told me to make the request in December if I had not used the vouchers by then.

          • Gaffa says:

            Yes it does work for Advance, I’ve done exactly this multiple times (I discovered it through genuine cancellations).

      • BJ says:

        Thanks Gaffa, if I don’t get my vouchers extended in December then I’ll give it a try.

  • Harold R says:

    I’m sitting on over £1000 worth of nectar points is there really no way to cash out above 0.5p? Is it worth holding out for a future opportunity?

    • Dan says:

      Presumably the decision to break ties with Tesco must mean BA are considering a Nectar partnership? Might be worth holding out to see where that lands?

    • Alex W says:

      Hoping that Christmas double up will be announced soon though this was limited to £100 each last year.

      • Colin MacKinnon says:

        Last two years we found that double up limit was per card – and we have four in our house linked to one account. And then found the app counted as another card! So got £500 double-upped!

      • Martin says:

        The double up is running.
        A trick to have the system is link multiple nectar cards to 1 account.
        Each card can use the maximum £50 to £100..
        I have 3 linked to same account so will be using 3 x 50 doubled up..

        • Martin says:

          Correct voucher online 28th October to 17th November.
          Spend from 11th to 17th.
          Digital vouchers only.

        • RogerC says:

          Where is the double-up? I can’t see it on the Nectar site…

    • Rob says:

      Something will come along. They won’t devalue so you are at no risk. You’ll get 1p per point when Sainsbury’s repeat their Double Up offer (although you may end up sitting on £1,000 of Sainsbury’s own label wine) and potentially £1,000 of eBay credit if you get a targetted 1p conversion offer.

    • Cam says:

      Nero vouchers are always a good bet. 350 points for the largest size drink with soy/oat milk can reach 1p/point, and doesn’t require waiting for a special offer.

      • Rob says:

        Good point. I should get some of these – we’ve just moved within 2 minutes walk of two Nero’s. Didn’t have one nearby before.

        • thehornets says:

          Although Caffe Nero appeat to be in a little bit of financial trouble, so I would stock up too much

        • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

          The O2 priority PAYG trick is worth a look too.

      • the_real_a says:

        But they dont add any extra coffee shots to large drinks! So you end up with a very weak, over diluted disgusting brown sludge 🙂

  • Mikeact says:

    But what do most on here do with their Nectar points ?

    • ankomonkey says:

      Mine have been sitting gathering dust for some time due to the lack of inspiring spend opportunities. Sainsbury’s is one of the furthest supermarkets from where we live, so the recent 5 bonus Nectar points when you buy onions deals have also been ignored. Even if I could be bothered, the bonus is far outweighed by the extra petrol cost. Nectar is my ALL Accor of the supermarket loyalty schemes.

    • sayling says:

      Christmas Dinner food shop

      • Colin MacKinnon says:

        Pal had a good stash of Nectar points to pay for Xmas dinner. When he got to the checkout, he found they’d all gone.

        He’d forgotten that the ex-wife had a card linked to the account!

    • Nick says:

      I’ve been spending them occasionally, but for nothing more exciting than in-store. I had more than I was comfortable hoarding and was earning them pretty fast for a while. It’s slowed down a bit since I stopped using Nectar Amex so am building a balance again. Hopefully there’ll be a good value tie up somewhere, but supermarket loyalty schemes seem to be diminishing (Tesco and Waitrose are nothing like they used to be) so I’m not overly hopeful.

    • AJA says:

      I just collect them until something grabs my attention. I recently bought a Samsung 32 inch Smart TV from Argos using some of mine. The TV was a bargain at £199. Not bad for basically earning them for free on my weekly shopping at Sainsburys.

  • PM says:

    Collect while waiting for devaluation and further scaling down of partners.

  • Andrew Steele says:

    WE spend our Nectar points at Christmas on food and stuff. It may not be a great deal but it helps spread the costs at an expensive time of year.

    As for LNER dropping Nectar. Since it is a nationalised company and given that its trains are running empty much of the time, what value is to the government to participate in a points scheme. I anticipate that all points earning opportunities on the railways will cease in the next 12 months and nothing will return until the government of the day decides how to franchise services out again. At the moment all the companies that remain private concerns are just providing a service to the government. In the North of England much of what we have is back under nationalised operation.

    • Jonathan says:

      I thought all TOC’s were essentially nationalised at the moment. Government is paying all the running costs & taking all the ticket revenue. Yet another example of how the franchise system is a complete waste of time as the risks are yet again passed back to the taxpayer.

    • Lister says:

      From the email LNER sent they are still looking to implement some sort of loyalty programme.

      We’ve been working hard on other ways to reward our customers and have something very exciting coming soon.’

  • Hardpack says:

    I have over 500,000 nectar points and I’ve been waiting for a ba tie up for a long time now…..

    • Genghis says:

      You’re really playing the long game!

      • Hardpack says:

        Lol yeah, I spend my other points but have never redeemed any nectar for some reason. Hopefully they tie up with ba and there’s a initial double conversion bonus …..they did allow easyJet redemptions some time back but I’ve got fingers crossed 🤞

  • Baji Nahid says:

    Nectar p!55 me off, they owe me around 21000 points for shopping i do on their portal and due to their error on their website, they are just wasting my time asking for receipts for the shopping over and over again. Spent thousands of pounds on their portal but yet they are refusing to cough up the points/cash that they should. Some days i think i should pursue legal action against them, other days i feel like sticking 2 fingers up at them and let karma do its thing.

    • BJ says:

      Why shop via Nectar, rates are generally poor. When contacting them ask for the manager, if you persist they get one on the line.

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