How to turn you grocery shopping into free holidays...

It's estimated that over 18 million people in the UK have a Nectar card. Many of them use it to get a few pounds off their shopping here or there, but if you use the Nectar scheme properly you can save yourself a small fortune when it comes to holidays.

 

I've been using the scheme religiously since the beginning of August 2021 and in that time have accumulated almost £1,100 in points in that time, an average of almost £70 a month.

 

How have I done that you may be asking? Well, it was surprisingly easy…

 

Let’s start with the basics: Nectar is a loyalty points scheme owned and run by Sainsbury's. Each Nectar point is worth 0.5 pence. You can collect points through a number of different means, mainly shopping, but also through credit cards and filling out surveys, to carrying out web searches on your computer.

 

Let’s start with shopping.

 

There are many different shops that you can collect points at if you shop online, the most obvious one being Sainsbury’s, where you can collect 1 point for every pound you spend, both in store and online.

 

You can boost this easily enough however as Nectar use data from what you buy to work out what your favourites are and then they offer you bonus points if you buy certain items. How many items they offer points for depends on how frequently you shop at Sainsbury’s but you can reasonably expect to get between six and 20 offers a week. The points on offer range from 10 points to 200 points. The offers refresh at 10am every Thursday, but you have until 11.59pm the following Friday to use them.

 

You need to select the offers via the App or website, just look for this option:

 

 

When you open up this box it will show you what your offers are. You can save them individually or all in one go. Once loaded on your card you need to make sure you buy the right product and it’s that simple.

 

In the time I’ve been shopping at Sainsbury’s I’ve been averaging around 530 bonus points per shop.

 

You can also collect points at Sainsbury’s petrol stations as well.

 

You can also link your Nectar account to various different partners so you’ll automatically collect points if you spend money there. These include Argos and eBay. Periodically they will offer a bonus point offer, such as double or treble points at Argos and five points for every pound on eBay.

 

It’s also worth keeping an eye out on special deals in the run up to Black Friday. In November 2021 they did a Power Hour scheme where you got 50 points for every £1 you spent on eBay. I was looking to buy a soundbar for my TV and purchased one in that hour for £149, earning 7450 Nectar points, worth £37.25, a quarter of what I spent. On Friday 25th November 2022 they are doing another Power Hour, albeit at a reduced rate of 30 points for every £1 you spend.

 

There are many other websites where you can collect points alongside your shopping, although you have to follow a link from the Nectar website to collect the points. Just scroll down on the webpage and you’ll see this option and you’ll see which partners are available.

 

 

An easier option is to download the Nectar Notifier, which displays a pop up on the right side of your screen when you are on a partner website and gives you the option to click on a link to collect points.

 

 

 

 

In truth, this isn’t always successful, and I often find you don’t necessarly get the points promised. For example, I used the Nectar Notifier on the Samsung website to buy a tablet for £229 a few months ago. It offered 3 points for every pound, which should have been 687 points, but I only got 548 points, roughly 2.39 points per pound.

 

There is a way around this though and that is by using the British Airways scheme, Avios, which can be converted into Nectar points in mulitples of 300 Avios points at a time, up to 50,000 Avios a month. The best thing about this is that every 300 Avios are worth 400 Nectar points.

 

You will need an Executive Club account, which anyone can sign up for and then just follow the links from the website or the app from each partner to collect points. Generally the points advertised are similar to Nectar, but it’s always better to use Avios as each Avios is worth 1.33 Nectar points. I have also found that you get what is offered. 

 

I brought a new phone in April 2022 which cost £819. At 2.39 Nectar points per £1, I’d have collected 1,957 Nectar points. Instead using the link from the BA Executive Club page I collected 2,458 Avios. At the time, 250 Avios was worth 400 Nectar points which meant the total amoutn of points my purchase was worth was 3,933 Nectar points. Now days it would still be worth 3,269 Nectar points, still more than double what I would have got going through Nectar. You also get an e-mail advising you when you’ve collected points and when they are added to your account.

 

A word of warning, it does take 10-12 days for your Avios to show on your Nectar account.

 

Nectar also run another option to collect extra points: Nectar Connect. This works by linking your credit and debit cards to your account. You will need to renew your cards every 89 days. They then offer various offers with partners, so if you make a purchase there you collect points.

 

 

There are some caveats, such as using service station, railways or airport branches of some stores and it doesn’t always work if your card is renewed, but you can get some good bonuses. I got 10,000 points simply for paying my Sky bill for two months for example.

 

The other scheme Nectar run, which for me has been a goldmine, is Nectar Canvass. This is an online survey platform where you earn points for doing surveys. You can earn anything from 2 points when you start a survey but aren’t its target audience, to 10-140 points depending on it’s length. Points come through in a matter of days onto your card, so it’s a really good way to boost points. I’ve used it when I am sat in front of the TV at night, waiting at airports etc and on some days have collected 500+ points.

 

There is also the scope to take part in further studies. From one survey I was asked to keep a diary of what my dog gets up to over the course of a week then spend an hour discussing it with a marketing company from the Netherlands. I earnt an additional 13,000 points (£65) through this.

 

Most of the surveys are extremely dull, but some can be interesting, such as asking for your opinions of forthcoming films/TV series and products such as Sky Glass.

 

There is also Nectar’s partnership with Esso. The best way to benefit from this is by using the Esso app, that allows you to pay without needing to go into the shop. It shows all the bonus points offers available (I regularly get offers of 200 bonus points for every 25 litre plus fill-up).

 

Another good way to collect Nectar points is through credit cards. There are three you need to be aware of, two of which have no account/membership fee and one is free for the first 12 months.

 

The first is the American Express Nectar Credit Card. This offers you a Nectar point for every 50 pence per transaction. They also run a promotional offer where if you spend £2,000 within three months of applying you get an additional 20,000 points (£100). There is a £25 annual membership fee, but the first year is free.

 

As anyone who has used Amex before will know not everywhere accepts Amex. Therefore, it’s good to have a backup and that’s where Barclaycard’s Avios Mastercard comes in. Here you get 1 Avios for every £1 you spend. There is also a promotional offer of 5,000 Avios if you spend £1,000 in the first three months, so with the 1,000 points for spending, plus the 5,000 bonus points, your 6,000 Avios would be worth 8,000 Nectar points, or £40.

 

The final card is  Sainsbury’s Bank’s Nectar Credit Card. This gives you 1 point for every £2 you spend in Sainsbury’s Argos, Habitat and Tu Clothing, and a promotional offer of 8,000 points (£40) if you spend £400 in Sainsbury’s, Argos, Habitat or Tu Clothing in the first two months (periodically its 10,000 points (£50)). You also get 1 point for every £5 spend elsewhere. To be honest, this card is no longer worth it since Sainsbury's Bank switched the rate for shopping in Sainsbury's owned stores from 2 points per £1 to 1 point per £2. I signed up for the card in 2021 at the old rate but cancelled it when the rate changed as it was no longer worth having.

 

Of the three, the best service is easily the Amex Card. Their customer service is incredible and whenever I have had need to call it’s been sorted straight away. The Barclaycard application process was easy but activating the app and using the card less so. Barclaycard did to be fair accept that the service I received wasn’t good enough and gave me an additional 5,000 Avios, so I can’t complain too much.

 

As for Sainsbury’s Bank, I can only describe the application process as sheer hell. It took three weeks from applying to being informed my application was successful and a further two weeks to receive my card. Sainsbury’s Bank prefer to do everything by paper, so will send you a paper contract to sign and post back. Unlike Amex and Barclaycard they don’t tell you if you’ve hit your spend target for the bonus point offer, only that it takes 60 days for the points to come through.

 

I now have just the first two cards all three cards. I've thought about cancelling the Amex card to avoid the annual fee, but with the recent drop in the value of Avios, you only need to spend an average of £625.50 a month on the Amex card to make more after the annual fee. There are other perks too, such as the much better customer service Amex offer and other offers which Amex feature, such as money off with various hotel chains, car hire companies and airlines. They've had a regularly appearing offer with United Airlines of £250 back when you spend £500.

So now that I’ve told you how you can collect points, now we come to the good part: Spending your points.

 

Nectar allows you to spend points at Sainsburys, eBay, Argos, Eurostar, Esso and Nectar Hotels.

 

Using your card in Sainsburys and Argos stores is easy; either tell the cashier how much you want to spend or select it from the spend points option on automated tills. You can spend points in multiples of 500 points (£2.50).

 

eBay has a page where you can convert your points, again in multiples of 500 points. Once in your account your credit remains available for up to 12 months. You can only use credit if you spend more than £10, but you don’t have to use it all up in one go, so if you swap 2,500 points for £12.50 and buy something for £11.99, you can still use the remaining 51p in your next purchase.

 

Esso offer a 5p a litre discount for 300 points. This would only be worthwhile if you need to fill up more than 30 litres.

 

Eurostar offer money off bookings in multiples of 2000 points (£10).

 

Just as you can convert Avios points to Nectar points, you can also convert Nectar points into Avios points and use them towards BA flights.

 

But where I have found them to be the most use is with Nectar Hotels. Nectar teamed up with Agoda to offer a booking platform where you can use your points to book hotel rooms around the world; for example, I booked a 4 star hotel near Vancouver airport for the last night of my forthcoming trip for 34,600 Nectar points (£173). I’ll admit the prices they quote are not always the best and in this case, I could have got this room for around £145 on booking.com, but that said, it hasn’t really cost me anything.

 

Avios also have their own hotel booking platform. Until their partnership with Nectar started Avios points never really had a value. Now days that has changed and there is a significant discrepancy between what you pay when you compare the two.

 

To highlight this, I looked for rooms in 10 cities (five in Europe, then New York, Sydney, Singapore, Dubai and Rio) around the world, picking out the first hotel I found on both Avios and Nectar’s hotel websites. I then looked for a double room for two people on the same weekend (1^st October 2022) with free cancelation and found on average you would use the equivalent of £39.55 more booking on Avios Hotels, then if you converted your Avios into Nectar and booked on Nectar Hotels.

 

Hotel and City	Avios Hotels			Nectar Hotels			Booking.com
	Avios	Nectar	Price	Avios	Nectar	Price
Ashburn Hotel - London	28,000	36,400	£182.00	17,437.5	27,900	£139.50	£165
Hotel du Lion d'Or Louvre - Paris	40,500	53,865	£269.33	27,875	44,600	£223	£224
Gran Barcino Hotel - Barcelona	25,050	33,316	£166.58	17312.5	27700	£138.50	£148
Hotel Canada - Rome	22,700	30,191	£150.96	17250	27600	£138	£145
Betlem Club Hotel - Prague	17,200	22,876	£114.38	10812.5	17300	£86.50	£94
Megaboom Hotel - Sydney	15,600	20,748	£103.74	13125	21000	£105	£98
Courtyard New York Manhattan/Times Square - New York	68,500	91,105	£455.53	32875	52600	£263	£292
Hampton by Hilton Dubai Al Seef - Dubai	16,550	22,012	£110.06	11437.5	18300	£91.50	£99
Lion Peak Hotel Purvis - Singapore	22,550	29,992	£149.96	16687.5	26700	£133.50	£104
Mar Ipanema Hotel - Rio de Janeiro	20,450	27,198	£135.99	15,562.5	24900	£124.50	£124