An update to my earlier blog today about loyalty points.
If you read my earlier blog "Dreams of a Big Reward Slowly Deflated" you will recall that I was going to donate all the unused points collected on my Nectar Card to Charity. In total I had 21,287 points which equated to approximately £106 if I spent them online with one of the reward partners (each 500 points is worth £2.50).
After a lot of searching I eventually found a page for me to gift these points to Charity - they have a link for donating to the Action for Children charity. It's worth noting that all the Reward partners are prominently listed, but if you want to spend points by gifting to charity you really have to know that this is what you want to do, and then persevere in order to find the page among all the links for Sainsbury's, Amazon, Laithwaites and Debenhams for example.
Finally I found the page and discovered that they would convert my points at a rate of £1 for every 250 points, and they only dealt in multiples of 250 points. That means that to the nearest 250 points my 21,287 points had a value to charity of only £85 - where did the other £21 go?
Discovering that Action for Children would only receive £85 and not £106 was starting to take the shine off my early morning gift of giving - but I carried on and found the a box where I could type in the number of points to be gifted - 21,250 - except that it would only accept 3 digits. Seemingly the maximum I could transfer at any one time was 750 points - or £3. This wasn't going smoothly. It was as if every time I wanted to make this gift another obstacle was put in my way - maybe I would relent and go shopping with iTunes or Argos instead.
So I gave the helpline a call and spoke to a (polite) customer services representative and after much going back and forth with his supervisor finally said that he would transfer all my points to the charity......and then disable my card.
"Hang on a moment" I said, "what do you mean, disable my card? I don't want to disable my card, I just want to give these points to charity and then carry on collecting points so that I might do it again next Christmas."
"No problem" he said, "you can pick up another card next time you go shopping"
"But I don't want to pick up another card, I've got a perfectly serviceable card here. In fact I've had it 8 years and I don't want the bother of having to pick out another card, re-register it, then opt-out from all your retailers emails and junk mail offers every five minutes. Why can't I just give 21,250 points to charity and then carry on as normal?"
Back to the Supervisor, and eventually I was transferred so that I could speak to her directly.
Two minutes later, job done. Points transferred and I keep my card. But it wasn't easy. Surely giving to charity can be a simpler process with Nectar - and why does it have to be financially punitive. Why not gift the points to them so that they can purchase the things they need from retailers so that they get the full value of what the points are worth to me. £106 down to £85 - that's robbery isn't it?
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