A new way to earn rewards on your spending

As high street favourite Boots launches a new addition to its rewards scheme, we take a look at how it compares.

Just about every large retailer you can think of participates in one loyalty scheme or another. Some stores operate their own rewards programme, allowing customers like you to earn a little something back on your spending.

In fact, shopping rewards have become so common, you won’t have to look far to find an incentive to buy items at your favourite shop. With this in mind, let’s take a look at the newly launched Treat Street from high street pharmacy Boots, and see how it measures up against other loyalty schemes.

Treat Street

Treat Street is the latest addition to the Boots Advantage Card scheme where you can earn extra Advantage points when you buy items online at the Boots Treat Street website from participating retailers. At the moment, 51 big brand stores are available on Treat Street including eBay, HMV, JD Sports, Play.com and Waterstones.

You’ll earn at least 1 Advantage point for every £1 you spend with these selected online stores. Extra promotional points - such as ‘double points’ incentives - may be offered, as well as the chance to collect one-off bonuses on certain purchases instead of the standard rate of 1 point per £1. You can use the points you’ve accumulated to buy items in Boots stores. If you like Boots products, and you were planning to spend at these retailers anyway, it makes a lot of sense to pick up the extra points.

But Treat Street isn’t as generous as the ordinary Advantage Card Scheme where customers can earn a far better standard rate of 4 points per £1 spent in Boots stores or by purchasing Boots products online.

How does it compare with other reward schemes?

Treat Street isn’t as competitive as the ordinary Boots Advantage scheme, as we have just seen, but how does it measure up against other large retailers’ reward schemes such as Nectar and Tesco Clubcard?

Nectar

First of all, Nectar, one of the most popular loyalty programmes in the UK, enables Nectar points to be collected using a Nectar card at over 450 places online and on the high street, including Amazon, Argos, Sainsbury’s and Homebase to name just a few - that’s nine times more retail partnerships than Treat Street has right now.

At most participating stores you’ll earn either 1 Nectar point per £1 spent or 2 Nectar points per £1 spent. So, depending on where you shop using your Nectar card you can build up points at the same rate as Treat Street or twice as quickly. You can also earn extra Nectar points with ‘double points’ incentives and extra points on specific purchases in much the same way as Treat Street.

Under the Nectar scheme, 500 points equals £2.50 to spend, which means that each Nectar point is worth only half as much as an Advantage point earned at Treat Street. For this reason, it looks like the new Boots new scheme may offer better value. But, having said that, Nectar points can be redeemed at more retailers using a Nectar card (again including Argos, Sainsbury’s and Homebase among others), whereas Advantage points can only be spent a Boots.  

Tesco Clubcard

Next up, let’s take a look at the Tesco Clubcard scheme. You can earn Clubcard points at Tesco businesses including Tesco supermarkets, Tesco.com, Tesco petrol stations, Tesco Direct, Tesco Mobile, Tesco Broadband and so on. But its only non-Tesco partner is energy company E.ON.

Just like Treat Street, you’ll earn 1 Clubcard point per £1 spent which will then be converted into Clubcard vouchers. Each point is worth 1p when spending your rewards. You can redeem your vouchers at Tesco, but they can be worth up to four times as much when spent on rewards at Tesco partners.

For example, every £2.50 in Clubcard vouchers is worth £10 to spend in restaurants such as Pizza Express and Cafe Rouge. Meanwhile, £2.50 in vouchers is worth 50 Airmiles. Vouchers can be used to pay for on a whole host of rewards including holidays, days out, dining out and cinemas.

So, in summary, Treat Street is more or less a par with Nectar and Tesco Clubcard in terms of the value of the scheme, but it’s far less flexible since points can only be redeemed at Boots.

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What about rewards credit cards?

So far we’ve looked at rewards schemes from some of the biggest UK retailers, but a wide range of shops also offer their own rewards credit cards. In this article - The top rewards cards revealed! - you can find out where the most generous schemes are to be found.

For example, the BHS Credit Card offers 5 reward points for every £1 spent in store which is worth 5p. In other words, £100 spent in BHS on the card, would earn you a £5 BHS voucher (or essentially a 5% discount). This is far more generous than many schemes - including Boots Advantage and Treat Street - but only of any real use if you’re a regular BHS customer.

Remember, you should only use a rewards credit card if you can afford to pay off your bill in full every month, otherwise the interest charges could completely wipe out the value of any rewards earned.

What about cashback credit cards?

The trouble with reward schemes and rewards credit cards is there are normally restrictions on where you can collect points and spend them. You can get round this problem by using a cashback credit card instead where you will be rewarded with cash which you can spend wherever you like. Again, don’t forget to pay off your bill in full or the cashback will soon become worthless.

A cashback credit card is a simple way to earn a cash reward on many more of your purchases, which usually works out better value than reward schemes or rewards credit cards. The quick table below outlines some of the best buys:

Compare rewards credit cards and cashback credit cards at lovemoney.com

More: New 10% cashback credit card | The best ways to get cashback