My Nectar card was emptied . . . while I slept
Ms M.A. writes: My Nectar account was cleaned out just before midnight, when I was at home, asleep in bed. Nectar say it is up to Sainsbury’s to deal with this. However, Sainsbury’s say they cannot do anything without CCTV to show that I was not in the store, and they have deleted the camera recording.
NECTAR is owned by Sainsbury’s, so when you complained to Nectar, you might think that a bit of joined-up management could have been employed, rather than Nectar shrugging its shoulders at you. And you did try very hard to deal with this yourself, before you contacted me.
You telephoned both Nectar and Sainsbury’s to report that points worth about £60 had been stolen from your account. You even went to the store where your missing points had been spent. It is the Sainsbury’s branch at Sury Basin in Kingston upon Thames in Surrey. You were told that the manager would phone you, but no call came, and when you returned to the store you were told the CCTV recording no longer existed.
Sainsbury’s insisted to you that the only way your Nectar points could have been spent was by your card being swiped, but you are just as insistent that your card never leaves your wallet until you hand it over at the till.
You suspect that someone, possibly within Sainsbury’s, could have downloaded the details without your knowledge, in what you told me would be a breathtaking lack of security.
Your own detective work uncovered a sympathetic member of staff who revealed that your points had been spent on shopping that included two large packs of babies’ nappies. Sainsbury’s described this as ‘ normal shopping’, and added that your points had also purchased alcohol and a toy train.
You were told that this ‘does not appear suspicious by our normal investigation standards’, and that if you thought there was anything suspicious then you should go to the police, not Sainsbury’s.
As you had already told the store giant that you were in bed asleep, miles away from Sury Basin, and with your Nectar card in your wallet, you might imagine that this could be enough to rouse suspicion.
None the less,Sa ins bury’ s regarded your trip as normal shopping, and that you, a senior citizen, might well have bought lots of nappies and a toy train. I did ask Sainsbury’s whether you had ever bought nappies and toys before. I also asked how long CCTV recordings are kept before being erased. The company did concede after all that these two items were not in line with your r egular s hopping, but t hey offered no answers about the missing CCTV coverage.
All Sainsbury’s would say in the end was: ‘We are in contact with Mrs A to arrange a new Nectar account and refund her missing points. We have also apologised for the inconvenience this may have caused.’
Sadly, the theft of Nectar points is not unusual. This is the third case I have reported on in the past few months. In one case, the genuine cardholder was told Sainsbury’s did not believe there had been any fraud, implying that he himself was the crook.
In another, Sainsbury’s tried to say the customer had authorised someone else to have an extra card on their account, but they refused to produce any evidence of this.
Nectar is a leaky ship. Cardholders who complain are fobbed off, told to contact the police, not the store, or that Sainsbury’s itself has destroyed the evidence. Only after a struggle are stolen points replaced. Either there are bad eggs among the staff, or the cards themselves are too easy to forge and duplicate. Or perhaps both are true. Either way, this Nectar leaves a sour taste.