If you’ve read my blog before you’ll know I’m a big fan of using loyalty schemes to save a bit of extra cash. Now if you shop at Sainsbury’s (even just occasionally), you’ve probably got a Nectar Card.
I recently wrote about the best ways to spend your Nectar points, so today’s post gives you a few tips on where to collect more Nectar points, and where you should avoid collecting Nectar points. (Yes, you read that right! There are places you should avoid collecting them at… All will be revealed!)
This post may contain affiliate links (marked with a *) where I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. For more information please read my full disclosure policy. All opinions are my own.
- How Many Nectar Partners are There?
- Where Should You Collect Nectar Points?
- Sainsbury’s
- TU Clothing
- Lloyds Pharmacies in Sainsbury’s Stores
- Esso Petrol Stations
- eBay
- Argos
- Collect Nectar points when you buy Train Tickets
- Sainsbury’s Bank and Energy Products
- Dulux Decorator Centres
- Credit Cards
- Daily Mail / MyMail Rewards
- Nectar Canvass
- Oxfam Tag a Bag Scheme
- Nectar Toolbar Browser Extension
- A Few More Places you can link accounts
- Signing Off
How Many Nectar Partners are There?
There are over 380 partners featured on the Nectar scheme website.
Most of these are places that let you collect Nectar points with only a few that you can actually spend them at.
Now I mentioned at the start that you should avoid collecting Nectar points at certain places. You might be wondering why you would ever decide not to collect loyalty points, after all, it’s basically something for nothing right?
Wrong… (well kind of).
Basically, the reason you should avoid collecting points at certain nectar partners comes down to the way you can claim the points. Places like Sainsbury’s where you simply swipe your card in-store are fine (this is one of the places you should definitely always collect Nectar points!).
But, to collect them with some of the online retailers, you need to click through to the retailer from the Nectar site…. This means, that in this scenario, the Nectar website is behaving like a cashback site.
And you guessed it, you can probably get a better deal with one of the other cashback sites. So, by collecting Nectar points you could be depriving yourself of a better cashback rate…
Let’s dive in and take a closer look.
Where Should You Collect Nectar Points?
Unfortunately, the Nectar website doesn’t let you filter partners by whether you can collect points in-store or by linking your account. This gave me no option but to manually go through all 384 partners to find out how many are simply “cashback deals”, i.e. where you click through from the site.
After a painstaking morning, I found that only 32 of the 384 partners weren’t cashback style offers. The 32 partners are below and let you collect Nectar points either by swiping in-store, linking your Nectar card to an online account or quoting your Nectar card number when you place an order.
You can only collect Nectar points with the other 352 partners when you click through from the Nectar website as you would a cashback site such as TopCashback* or Quidco*.
So, for these offers it’s highly likely you’ll get a better rate through one of the big cashback sites so it’s probably best to double-check before you opt for Nectar points.
If you’re not sure how much your Nectar points are worth, you can find out with my handy Nectar Points Calculator.
And to find out the best cashback rates, I recently used a handy new site called Cashback Angel when I compared TopCashback and Quidco to see which site paid the most. So, if you want to make life easier it’s well worth checking out.
Being a glutton for punishment after trawling through nearly 400 partners on the Nectar website, I decided to inflict a bit more pain on myself and compare the results from this comparison against the Nectar rate (just to see if I was right and that the cashback sites do offer a better deal).
I compared 16 offers and here are the results:
- Currys PC World – 2 points per £1 (1%) vs 1% cashback with either Quidco or TopCashback
- Just Eat – 1 point per £1 (0.5%) vs 1.2% for existing customers with TopCashback
- Debenhams – 6 points per £1 (3%) vs 3% from TopCashback
- Expedia – 6 points per £1 (3%) vs 4% for most offers from TopCashback
- Sports Direct – 2 points per £1 (1%) for new customers only vs 4% from TopCashback (all customers)
- New Look – 2 points per £1 (1%) vs 2% from TopCashback or Quidco
- Booking.com – 6 points per £1 (3%) vs 4% from TopCashback
- ASOS – 2 points per £1 (1%) vs 2.4% for existing customers from TopCashback (9.6% for new customers)
- Carphone Warehouse – 500 points for SIM-only contract (£2.50) vs £25 from TopCashback
- AO.com – 1 point per £1 (0.5%) vs a minimum of 1% with TopCashback (2.5% for some categories)
- Groupon – 2 points per £1 (1%) vs 18% from TopCashback
- Red Letter Days – 8 points per £1 (4%) vs 18% from Quidco
- Bohoo.com – 3 points per £1 (1.5%) vs 3.6% from TopCashback
- Lego – 2 points per £1 (1%) vs 3.6% from TopCashback
- Very – 2 points per £1 (1%) vs 1% from TopCashback and Quidco for existing customers (Up to 14% for new customers)
- Hotel Chocolat – 2 points per £1 (1%) for online orders or 175 points (87.5p) when signing up to monthly membership vs Up to 9.1% from TopCashback for online orders or £4.55 for signing up to the monthly subscription.
So as you can see, in most cases with these offers, you’re likely to be better off using a cashback site rather than going for Nectar points.
So I’ve dug through the site and pulled out the partners that let you collect points on either in-store purchases or by linking your Nectar card to an online account, so you’re not depriving yourself of cashback.
Sainsbury’s
This is a no-brainer and probably the reason most of us have a Nectar card in the first place. You can collect Nectar points on all your Sainsburys shopping and get 1 point per £1 spent. To get them you just swipe your physical card in-store or swipe the barcode in the app.
You can also collect points online, but importantly you don’t need to click through the Nectar website first. This means you can get cashback at the same time using either TopCashback* or Quidco* (or one of the many other cashback sites).
To collect points on your online shopping you just need to link your Sainsbury’s and Nectar accounts.
TU Clothing
Get 1 point per £1 spent on TU Clothing*. To earn points you can swipe your card at the till if you’re in a Sainsbury’s, or link your card to your TU account* if you order online.
Lloyds Pharmacies in Sainsbury’s Stores
Swipe your card at the till for 1 point per £1 spent on qualifying over the counter purchases. 100 bonus points on selected services such as travel vaccinations.
Esso Petrol Stations
Swipe your card at the till to claim 1 point per litre of fuel, or 2 points per £1 spent in-store. This only applies to Esso branded shops though.
eBay
You can collect Nectar points on everything you buy on eBay* when you link your Nectar card to your eBay account*
eBay also runs periodic promotions that boost the Nectar points you can collect such as 10X Nectar Points Offers on a certain spend or quadruple Nectar points like this one.
The promotions tend to be fairly short-lived though so usually over a weekend or a 24hour period.
You can also get a bonus 500 points at the moment* when you convert 1000 nectar points or more into eBay vouchers.
You can spend your Nectar points on eBay too by converting them into vouchers.
Argos
You can collect bonus Nectar points when you shop at Argos, again by linking your Argos and Nectar accounts*. They’re not available all the time though as you can only collect bonus Nectar points at Argos during certain promotions.
There aren’t any running at the time of writing but you can check here to see if any are available*
Collect Nectar points when you buy Train Tickets
You can collect Nectar points with several train companies without having to click through from the website. They all work by linking your Nectar card to your online account. The train services you can collect points with are:
- Avanti Westcoast – 2 points per £1 spent
- Great Western Railway – 5x Points until 29th January (usually 2 points per £1 spent)
- LNER (London North Eastern Railway) – 2 points per £1 spent
- South Western Railway – 5x Points until 29th January (usually 2 points per £1 spent)
- TransPennine Express – 2 points per 1 spent
Sainsbury’s Bank and Energy Products
You can collect points when you buy some Sainsbury’s Financial and Energy products, such as Home Insurance, Life Insurance, and Loans. With these deals, you tend to get a lump sum of points when you quote your Nectar number at the time you order your policy or get a quote.
With the Sainsbury’s Energy deal, when you link your Nectar account to your Sainsbury’s Energy account you collect Nectar points on all of your energy bills.
Dual fuel customers also get triple points when they shop in Sainsbury’s.
Dulux Decorator Centres
Swipe your Nectar card at the till or enter your card number on the online checkout page, to earn 2 points for every £1 spent.
Credit Cards
You can get bonus points with the following credit cards.
American Express Nectar Credit Card – Bonus of 20,000 Nectar points but you need to spend £2000 in the first 3 months! The card has a £25 annual fee too though so I’m not a huge fan of this one.
Sainsbury’s Bank credit card gives you 750 bonus Nectar points every time you spend £35 in Sainsbury’s. You can do this up to a maximum of 10 times, so if you’re a regular Sainsbury’s shopper it might be worth considering.
Daily Mail / MyMail Rewards
If you’re a Mail reader, you can collect points by signing up with the MyMail Rewards scheme. With the scheme, a 12-digit Unique code is printed on the back of the Daily Mail (and Mail on Sunday) every day.
To get your points you need to link your Nectar card to your MyMail account, then enter this number on your MyMail rewards account.
- On Mondays to Fridays, you collect 5 Nectar points each day
- Saturdays you get 10 Nectar points,
- And Sundays you get 15 Nectar points.
- You also get 30 bonus points for collecting all codes for a week.
This means you can collect a maximum of 80 Points a week. Roughly 40p worth of Nectar points.
There are a couple more ways you can collect points with the Daily Mail too.
- You can collect 2 points for every £1 you spend on Mailshop.co.uk
- If you subscribe to the MailPlus Digital Subscription to the Daily Mail and Mal on Sunday, you can link your Nectar account to earn points. You get 100 Nectar points in your first month then another 100 3 months later is you’re still subscribed.
Nectar Canvass
If you like giving your opinion, Nectar Canvas lets you earn Nectar points for completing surveys. You can earn up to 120 points per survey.
This only equates to 60p, so I personally don’t think this is really worth bothering with. According to the Nectar Canvas help section, surveys typically take less than 15-20 minutes. So, 15 minutes to earn 60p worth of Nectar points doesn’t seem like a great deal to me! One to steer clear of I think
Oxfam Tag a Bag Scheme
With the Oxfam Tag a Bag Scheme you get 100 Nectar points when you sign up to the scheme, then get 2 points per £1 your Donated items raise when they’re sold.
How it Works
Once you sign up, you’ll get some personalised tags sent out to you in the post
Oxfam then tracks your items so that when they’re sold you earn Nectar points on the proceeds.
You can also get 2 points per £1 you spend online at the Oxfam shop.
Nectar Toolbar Browser Extension
The Nectar Notifier is a handy browser extension that notifies you when Nectar points are available when your shopping online.
TopCashback and Quidco both have similar reminder tools.
You also earn Nectar points as you search online. You get 1 point per 2 valid searches, up to a maximum of 200 points a month.
A Few More Places you can link accounts
We’re down to the last few places now that let you link your account to collect points.
- Brakes – 1 point per £1 spent on Foodservice products
- DFDS – Collect 2 points per £1 on all bookings made from UK ferry ports
- DHL – 1 point for every £1 spent on sending parcels with DHL Express
- Europcar – Collect 1 point per £1 spent on all UK Europcar car or van rentals, and a fixed 200 points for car or van rentals abroad.
- Viking – 2 points per £1 when you place an order at Viking.
Signing Off
So there you have it. My guide to extra ways to collect more Nectar points, and which places you should probably steer clear of. Do you collect Nectar points at places other than Sainsbury’s? I’d love to hear in the comments below.
