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Tesco has been slowly but surely revamping its Clubcard scheme over recent months. The supermarket giant has been heavily promoting its PayQwiq app and seems to have stopped offering bonus points for gift card purchases.
Today they announced some much more interesting changes. Excitingly, this includes partnerships with Uber & Hotels.com as well as upgrades in their contactless technology.
What You Need to Know:
- Uber & Hotels.com added as a reward partner on the Boost scheme.
- You can swap your Clubcard vouchers for 3x the value with either of these two partners.
- These partners have been added to the Clubcard site today.
- The minimum value of the vouchers you can use on the Boost scheme has decreased.
- For many Boost partners, the minimum value voucher you could exchange was £2.50, this has dropped to 50p for many partners, including Uber.
- However, the minimum value for Hotels.com is £5.
- The smartphone app is being revamped.
- You can apply for a Clubcard instantly via the app.
- Even better, you can access your Clubcard vouchers on the app – no more paper vouchers necessary.
- New look contactless Clubcards/key fobs are being sent out over the next week or so.
- Don’t fret, your current ones will continue to work.
Unfortunately, there is no news yet as to if/when the Tesco Clubcard credit card will become contactless.
Tesco Clubcard Changes Bottom Line:
There’s always a creeping feeling of trepidation when a new loyalty scheme change is announced these days. Fortunately, I view these changes as pretty positive. Obviously, Uber has its fierce critics and I wouldn’t be surprised if this partnership leads to some people pushing for a Tesco boycott.
On the other hand, I’m a fan of contactless technology and a regular user of Uber and Hotels.com. I haven’t had chance to check the small print yet, but if there isn’t anything too prohibitive involved when redeeming vouchers at 3x face value for Uber and Hotels.com, I can definitely see myself taking advantage, and moving away a bit from converting Clubcard Points into Avios.
You nearly gave me a heart attack with that headline.
I still dread the day when they drop avios.com/British Airways, or do a major devaluation. Or both.
If that day comes, Tesco will find a major shrinking of their customer base.
I agree, if they do drop/lose Avios then that could be the end for many customers. It probably would have been the end for me… until the addition of Uber & Hotels.com.
Will it though? Really?! Is Tesco’s business model based on customers buying stuff and converting a tiny percentage of that revenue into Avios points? I’d argue that if Tesco managed to join their dots together they’d realise that maintaining the Clubcard scheme but devaluing it so that it is only marginally better than Nectar would improve their bottom line quite a bit.
Anyone know if you use CC vouchers on hotels.com, are you still entitled to the free nights as part of their loyalty scheme?
I’m pretty sure of you use the CC vouchers, that stay won’t qualify towards your 10 nights for a free night.
This isn’t great but there may be occasions that this is useful….
your hitel.com one nighr voucher is calculated as the average cost of your 10 nights. Recently I booked an extremely cheap last minute (£20) room for one night which has now lowered my average cost for those 10 days.
I would much rather have paid for that room outright with my CC vouchers and forfeit that one night to keep my average cost higher.
I’m personally seeing some value via cc & hotels.com over the use of avios for free hotels.
Avios only tend to deal with chains, hotels.com offer a variance of accommodations in more locations.
yeah
As with anything in this game, there will definitely be real value to be gleaned from this, but it all depends on your situation. YPMV right?
I’m curious as to why you would want the average cost higher. The higher it is, the more money is wasted if you don’t spend the free night on an expensive hotel night.
But i’m assuming you use it, so can make a greater saving?
Not really… the whole system is just a 10% rebate. Whether your hotel rate is £20 or £200, you’re still getting 10% of it to use in the future.
Max of £100 tesco cc voucher can be used at hotels.com, doesn’t stop you doing another £100 on partners account so bookings could be back to back.
“Unfortunately, there is no news yet as to if/when the Tesco Clubcard credit card will become contactless.”
Not sure why you say this – I’ve had a contactless Clubcard credit card for a number of months now, and use it regularly at the gates on the tube, works perfectly!
Ah good to know Stephen, I was informed by someone that they had migrated the debit cards for the current account to contactless but not the credit cards…
Apologies for that!
It’s a shame they didn’t allow you to spend your points as you accrue them rather than wait till the end of the quarter.
The Tesco Clubcard Credit Card IS contactless, I have one in my possession.