Why won’t Sainsbury’s just say who stole my 6,000 Nectar points?
M.D. writes: Over years, I accumulated more than 6,000 Nectar points, only to see 6,000 of them suddenly deducted from my account. Nectar said they had been spent at Argos in Newtownabbey, County Antrim. I had never been there, so I visited the store and the manager told me my points had been used to buy exercise equipment. He even had the name and email address of the customer. Nectar still refused to replace my missing points and told me to contact the police.
RELUCTANTLY, you went to the police, and an officer took a statement from you, though nothing seems to have happened since. This is not surprising. Nectar seems very leaky and lots of people have reported that their points have been spent without their knowledge in stores they have never visited.
Nectar is owned by Sainsbury’s, as is Argos, so I asked staff at the head office of Sainsbury’s to look into what you told me. They replied: ‘We are investigating the suspicious activity and in the meantime are in contact with Mr D and have apologised for his experience, refunded his points, and provided a gesture of goodwill.’
This was great in as far as it went. You lost 6,000 Nectar points and Sainsbury’s has just replaced them and added another 3,000 on top. But how could Sainsbury’s tell me it was investigating now? I had not told the supermarket giant that I knew the theft of your points had taken place last January.
Perhaps they thought I believed it was recent, while, in truth, you had been fighting this battle for months, always being refused the return of the stolen points – until now.
How could Sainsbury’s still be investigating, almost a year after the incident? Was it worth hanging on for a result, I asked? The response was a call to you from Nectar, telling you the matter was closed, since you live not far from the Argos branch and Nectar believes there was no fraud at all.
You took this to suggest that you had lent your card to someone, and had complained afterwards to get back the 6,000 points you had allowed them to spend.
You have told me: ‘At no time have
I lent my Nectar card to another person. Why won’t they disclose who used my points, and settle this matter once and for all?’
Why, indeed. Sainsbury’s will not tell you who filched your points, and nor will they tell me.
And this is a common experience among the large number of victims of Nectar theft. I wonder though why Sainsbury’s expects its cardholders to involve the overburdened police, rather than tighten its own security?
If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at
Financial Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB or email tony. hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.