Pricewatch: Best and worst when it comes to loyalty cards

Loyalty cards are all over the place now. From the humble card you get stamped in your local coffee shop to the high-tech data collection wizardry behind advanced schemes you sign up to without thinking too much about the privacy implications. We asked on social media for recommendations as to the best and worst last week. Here are just some of the recommendations we got – in no particular order – and some of the ones we were advised to avoid.

1. Boots Advantage Card: With this card you will get four points for every €1 spent. When you spend €50 you earn 200 points which can be converted into €2 worth of vouchers. The benefits are more pronounced if you're over 60 or the parent of a child under three – at least if you buy certain products.

The over 60s get 10 points for every €1 spent on Boots own-brand products which works out at a not too shabby €10 back on every €50 spent. Parents get the same return for every €1 spent on baby products, at least until their child turns three. They can’t earn points on baby formula because, heaven forbid, that might seem like the retailer was promoting the use of such products.

2. O'Brien's Wines Loyalty Club: You get a point for every €1 you spend on spirits and beer, and three points for each €1 spent on wine. If you were to buy four bottles of wine a week you'd earn yourself 6240 points over the course of a year. That would be enough to cover three fancy bottles of wine for your Christmas table. The wine in O'Briens is very good too, or so we're told. To be honest the only downside we see to this loyalty scheme is that it will track how much we will drink if we sign up.

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3. TK Maxx Treasures: This loyalty scheme is – at best – confusing. The T&Cs run to over 4,500 words and after reading them all we still struggled to identify what we would get if we signed up. There was certainly nothing by way of points or cash back, and instead we could look forward to "a new reward, like a stylish giveaway or an invitation to a sparkling store event" every month. That could be brilliant or it could be terrible – we had no way of knowing.

4. Subway Subcard: The Subway specialists give you 10 points for every €1.50 you spend. When you get 100 points you can cash them in for a hot drink. If you make it to 200 points you can get a snack, while 500 points will earn you a regular 6" Sub, flatbread or salad. With 1,000 points you can look forward to a 12'' Sub or flatbread. So for every €150 you spend you can look forward to a free lunch.

5. Coffee cards: Coffee chains are where loyalty schemes are 10 a penny. But they are not all created equal. In both Buttler's and Insomnia every tenth coffee is free – although the people at Butler's shade it because they will give you a free chocolate with the coffee too. Crunching the numbers that means that in both places you get €3 back for every €27 spent. The story is not so attractive and a bit more complicated in Costa Coffee, where you get five points for each €1 spent. A point is worth a cent so you need 300 points to get a free coffee and have to spend €60 to get to that magic point, although if you register your card on the Costa website you will get a bounce of 100 points – or a third of a cup of coffee by way of thanks. Still with us? Good. In Starbucks a free drink comes your way with 15 stars and you get a star with every drink purchased so you have to spend €45 to get a freebie.

6. Brown Thomas: You get a point for every €1 you spend and every point is worth a cent. If you spend money in the store in the three days before your birthday, on the day of your birthday and in the three days after your birthday, BTs will reward you by giving you triple points. So, were you to buy yourself a Marc Jacobs handbag worth €500 on your birthday you would get a whopping 1,500 points. Well, we say whopping, but the reality is that the points bonanza is worth €15, which will buy you half a designer sock at BTs. Annoyingly, on May 31st every year all the points earned in the previous calendar year expire.

7. Arnotts Wonder Card: The point allocation is similar to the BT offering – you get a point for every €1 spent with each point worth one cent. Points expire too, but only 18 months after they were first acquired, and on a rolling basis after that point which makes the Wonder card a more attractive proposition. We like how it is hooked up to our phone so you don't have to have the card on you to accumulate points. You also get double points in the beauty hall and – as with BTs – triple points during your birthday week.

8. Debenhams: When it comes to big multistore department stores, the Debenhams deal seems pretty generous to us. You get three points for every €1 spend, with each point worth a cent. That means you "earn" €3 for every €100 spent. And it has the odd special offer too, such as the current deal which will give you €5 worth of points with skincare purchases.

9. Ikea Family card: "Joining our family brings you even closer to IKEA – helping make your every day be a bit more wonderful." So says the blurb promoting the Swedish giant's card. While we are big fans of Ikea we're not entirely convinced we are part of its family or get any closer to it than we have to or that shopping there is some kind of wonderful experience. The card is still handy, though, and will give you free tea or coffee of a morning except on weekends and a six-item breakfast for a quite ridiculous €2.50. You don't get points in the traditional sense, and instead the card gives you discounts on certain products.

10. Mothercare Family Card: This card will give you two points for every €1 spent, as well as bonus points promotions betimes. Given that expectant parents could quite easily spend €2,000 on a buggy, a cot and all the rest, the double point system could earn you 4,000 points on a single visit which is worth €40. It's not massive by any means, but it is better in your pocket than in someone else's.

11. Dunnes Stores Value Card: With this you get one point for every €1 you spend, with each point worth a single cent. Spend at least €200 and you get vouchers in the post in April, August and December. If you have less than 200 points when the mail period arrives, the points roll over until the next mailing period. As with other supermarkets it is worth keeping an eye on the point offers when they come up. One points promotion the store has run in the recent past that we were quite keen on saw shoppers earn 25 points for every €1 spent on six bottles of wine and champagne. We know that the maths here aren't that easy so let us help. If you buy €60 worth of wine when there is a points promotion of that nature running you will get 1,500 extra points, which will convert into €15 worth of vouchers which will allow you buy another bottle and a half of wine.

12. Tesco's Club Card: This is very similar to the Dunnes' card in that it gives you one point for every €1 you spend, and once you have a certain number of points accumulated – in this case 150 –you will get vouchers. The Boost is what makes the Tesco scheme stand apart. It allows you to increase the value of your voucher by as much as 400 per cent if you spend it with the supermarket's partners. So every €2.50 in Club Card vouchers earned can be worth a tenner in restaurants, including TGI Friday and Milano, as well as €10 on days out with your family, including trips to Dublin Zoo and the Aliwee Caves. A €3.50 voucher can be exchanged for a ticket into the National Aquatic Centre – worth €15 – while €4 Club Card vouchers gets you a cinema ticket in Cineworld.

13. SuperValu Real Rewards: Superquinn was one of the first supermarkets in Europe to launch a loyalty programme more than 20 years, and many people who we spoke to ahead of writing this article spoke fondly of the scheme. They spoke less fondly of the SuperValu scheme which has replaced it, although by our reckoning it has improved greatly in recent times. For every €1 you spend you get a point, and you can double your point intake if you pay for your shopping with a Bank of Ireland credit card. By linking your loyalty card to you Electric Ireland accounts you get 250 points, which can be used to offset your energy bills and that works in reverse too with every €3 paid on you bill earning you one SuperValu Real Rewards point. And the shop has a swanky loyalty app which will allow you access rewards online and on your phone.

14. Hotels. com Reward Nights: If you book hotels online a lot you might want to look at the hotels.com reward programme. Colleagues of ours swear by it, although we've not used it ourselves. It seems pleasingly simple. Book 10 nights in hotels on the site (and not necessarily in a single block) and get one reward night free. The value of the freebie is the average price of the 10 nights you have already collected. You can redeem your reward nights at over 190,000 properties anytime, anywhere.

15. AerClub from Aer Lingus: "We aim to offer a world class service and to meet the needs of the modern international traveller. With this in mind, we've developed AerClub as a loyalty programme for everyone. Join today and start collecting straight away towards reward flights and tier benefits. It's our way of saying thanks for choosing to fly with us." So says the promotional blurb on the fairly new AerClub section of the Aer Lingus website.

Now that makes the system sound great, but many of the 100,000 people who belonged to the Aer Lingus Gold Circle frequent-flyer programme which AerClub has replaced are not happy.

The Gold Circle Club was an air miles-based programme which saw points assigned based on the duration of your flight. The new system assigns points based on how much cash you spend on your flights. This works to airlines’ advantage because they get to reward high-spending passengers as opposed to those who fly the longest distances but don’t necessarily spend the most on their tickets.

AerClub has four tiers of membership: Gold, Silver, Platinum and Concierge, and the tier you get access to depends on how much you have spent in the last year – you get three Avios points for every €1 spent on flights.

When we asked about loyalty schemes online last week many people lined up to give out about the new scheme.

“Where possible I have always flown Aer Lingus for business and leisure trips since the early 1990s,” wrote Caroline Martha McGee

She assiduously collected points, and when the Gold Club scheme ended she was sent a closing balance of 4,250 points. “However, when my AerClub account information was sent to me early in 2017 it showed the same ‘Welcome’ balance of 250 points as other members of my family (who do minimal travel with AL). It did not show any credit for the number of points accrued during 2016.”

When she contacted the company she was told that because she was at “applicant” status when the scheme closed she was not eligible to have the Gold Card points transferred to AerClub. “I have been stonewalled in my attempts to resolve the issue with Aer Lingus staff. I have tried to contact the AerClub migration team but they do not speak to customers on the phone apparently!”

Colin O’Regan said Aer Lingus had used the switch “to sneakily change their terms and conditions, removing the facility to redeem your points to retain your membership if you didn’t reach the minimum points to retain your status in the previous 12 months”.

It is "the least value ever for ordinary frequent flyer and gives the business flyer what they already paid for", said Pauline Evers.

"The new AerClub loyalty scheme is pretty awful," was the view of Elisa Duncan Cullen. "

The migration from Gold Circle to AerClub resulted in 75 per cent reduction in value of points... so much for loyalty," said David Balbirnie.

We contacted the airline who sent us a statement extolling the virtues of the new scheme. It concluded by saying that an “historic lack of investment in Gold Circle meant there were some technical issues in migrating some members to the new AerClub platform”.

The spokeswoman acknowledged this “has caused some dissatisfaction amongst our membership base. This must however be taken in the context of a programme with 500,000 members”. She said the airline was “pleased to report we have resolved the vast majority of these issues and our team continues to work hard to resolve any further problems members may be experiencing. Our research indicates that AerClub members are satisfied with the programme”

The statement concluded by saying that “any major change-programme has challenges, but we are pleased to have delivered a bespoke programme which is centred on providing Irish consumers with a truly Irish reward programme and our team continues to make the necessary improvements to address any outstanding member issues.”