Who held a party using my £525 of Nectar points?
P.L. writes: I have reached an impasse with Nectar, Sainsbury’s and Action Fraud over the loss of Nectar points worth more than £500. I found that points worth £525 were missing from my account, having been spent at three Sainsbury’s branches over three days while my wife and I were out of the country. My local Sainsbury’s tried to help, and said the purchases were not typical of our shopping. But letters to Sainsbury’s bosses go unanswered and Nectar has offered no explanation, apology or refund.
OVER the past several months, I have received dozens of complaints from Sainsbury’s customers who say their Nectar points have been stolen.
After publishing some of these and warning that Sainsbury’s – which owns the Nectar card scheme – was far from helpful, I had not intended to investigate any more. However, if someone were mugged in the street and robbed of more than £500 I would expect the theft to be taken seriously, so I decided to look closely into what happened to you.
When you made a complaint about the theft,Sa ins bury’ s rejected it, saying there were no suspicious circumstances. So, since you say you were abroad when your Nectar points were spent, I asked the supermarket what it would take to make it regard the spending as suspicious.
You were also told that the goods bought with your £ 525 were not out of keeping with your normal shopping.
However, helpful staff at your lo ca lS a ins bury’ sat Balham, in South-West London, flatly contradicted t his, so I askedSa ins bury’ s to say exactly what was bought.
I also asked where your Nectar points were spent. You were told that all the spending was at the Balham store, yet further enquiries show that this was not true and your points were also cashed at two Sainsbury’s branches in central London, at Rochester Row and Pimlico.
On top of all this, the real shock came when I realised you had been robbed not once, but twice.
Since you were abroad when your £525 was stolen, and your Nectar cards were with you, this indicated there was a fake Nectar card in existence showing your account details.
You might have expected Sainsbury’s to realise this, replace your cards, and flag up the fake card at its tills. Instead, someone clearly holding a party used your recently earned Nectar points to purchase 20 steaks and a large quantity of beer. Again, I asked Sainsbury’s whether this was your typical shopping.
Sainsbury’s has now reconsidered and has told me the purchases made with your points do not match your usual shopping. It admits your claim was turned down because nobody took into account that you were out of the country and not going from branch to branch using up your Nectar points.
However, it dug itself deeper into difficulty by telling me you had failed to report the second theft. In fact, you were able to produce email after email between you and Sainsbury’s proving the exact opposite.
Sainsbury’s has now cancelled your existing cards and opened a new account for you, with a complete refund of all your stolen points. Ungraciously though, it describes this as ‘a gesture of goodwill’, rather than treating a theft victim fairly.
I did ask Sainsbury’s to say whether a fake card was used by the thief, and how long in-store CCTV recordings were kept.
Since the company claims to have its own Nectar fraud team, I also asked how many people it had prosecuted for stealing points, as the only such record I can find is of the prosecution of a Sainsbury’s employee.
Sainsbury’s told me it deletes recordings after 31 days, but it refused to say whether your thief used a fake Nectar card, or to reveal how many prosecutions it had brought, if any.