Waitrose vouchers - tip

They brought in a particularly annoying ‘voucher’ scheme a few months ago whereby you have to choose 2 vouchers online each week from previously purchased products as well as a regular ‘newspaper’ voucher offer whereas you’d previously get one free if you spent over £10.

What a faff, you’d think your chosen vouchers would be linked to your loyalty cards at the checkout, but no you have to scan each voucher off your smartphone app. Cannot believe how stupid and inefficient this is.

Anyhow, having complained at the checkout when a selected voucher item was out of stock, I found the vouchers are applied whether or not you’ve actually bought the item.

So if you use this, simply choose the 2 best offers ‘pound wise’ and redeem them when you pay.

So today got £4 off meat I had in the trolley and £2.50 off tuna I didn’t! Bizarre…

4 Likes

Fascinating. Mrs HH will give it a go this week. The whole ‘improved’ scheme is complete rubbish.

2 Likes

Entirely agree, and emailed them some feedback.

Seems designed by someone who doesn’t physically shop.

The response just didn’t seem to appreciate that it’s actually intrusive (emails weekly telling you to choose vouchers) nor what a faff and ineffcient it is.

While I guess I rarely used things like a free coffee or newspaper just by scanning the loyalty card, the ‘rewards’ on 2 items don’t seem to compensate for those potential benefits.

Ecologically having paper vouchers in the post you might or might not use was far from ideal, but was at least passive rather than requiring active time engagement to select ‘offers’ as we have now.

I think someone made a giant booboo with this new scheme.

1 Like

Not knowing of the trick mentioned I liked the idea of being able to pick the products. The one downside was needing to use the phone at check out and also suggested linking to your card automatically but by not doing so they gain the chance you might forget.

1 Like

In a way yes, but it’s clearly designed to make you interact with their website or app ‘to rope you in’ when I’d frankly rather not. It’s Waitrose asking me to invest my time by selecting short-lived offers each week. I resent it as much as cold-calling.

I’m sure they’ll cotton on to this ‘hack’ soon, but for now I’ll use it.

The much older system where you could choose 10 (I think) favourite products from a selection for ongoing discounts over weeks/months without going to their website again was far better.

3 Likes

Yes this new system is such a faff at the checkout. I consider myself pretty good with apps and my phone flies through anything thrown at it (unlike some peoples choices on a recent phone thread here haha), but it doesn’t work efficiently. Not completely knocking your advice, but I can’t see how getting £4 off an item will still work every time if I don’t buy it.

It simply shows at the moment I think that the system isn’t very clever. If it’s simply accepting vouchers irrespective of whether you are buying the item or not it seems checkout and voucher systems are not integrated or intelligent enough to do so. I’d imagine this will change, but customer services did tell me that if a product you’d chosen a voucher for was out of stock you could use it for a similar product - maybe this is why this loophole exists currently.

Selecting vouchers is a faff, having to manually scan them inividually at the checkout is ludicrous as they should be linked to your loyalty card - scan that physically or via the phone and any applicable discounts should come off automatically.

1 Like

I’m not sure they care. Exactly the same thing happened with the previous booklets of (seemingly) item-specific vouchers they used to send in the post. Each voucher named a type of product with a picture of exactly the one we usually bought (eg ‘Save £1 on Fruit Juices’ with a picture of the carton we buy a lot of). It was only when I absentmindedly scanned all the vouchers in on autopilot one day that I realised I hadn’t bought anything covered by several of the vouchers. The discounts all went through nonetheless.

I agree that it seems more like an enticement to engage with an app rather than anything terribly item-specific, but goodness knows how they think this will work to their advantage.

Mark

1 Like

JL&W management have gone app-crazy.
For Partners, there’s a surfeit of the bloody things.

1 Like

So do you have to say something to the ‘person’ at the checkout or does it just happen (money comes off the total) when you scan your card?

This having to use a smartphone to claim the vouchers has, kind of, put me off even scanning the card at checkout - what’s the point?

M&S is the same… they have their ‘Sparks’ card but you need a smartphone to claim any of the vouchers. My mum, after a argument in her local M&S store with the checkout, has given in and doesn’t bother using her card any more. Often I see members of staff having to help older customers use their vouchers.

1 Like

Just say you have a couple of vouchers to scan before paying and scan them. Checkout staff won’t care or probably even know which vouchers tou have.

I think Waitrose have either lost their marbles or have a rather cynical leadership. It seems to me that the older customers are being filtered out of a discount benefit many of whom can ill afford. Perhaps I am wrong but I suspect folks heading into their 70’s are less likely to be au fait with emails/ smart phones and converting the emails into usable vouchers. Particularly when compounded by the faff of trying to use them at the check out. Much more consideration needed for your loyal customers, Waitrose!

Peter

2 Likes

I think the issue is these schemes are dreamt up by people in their 20’s who can’t even imagine the world actually existed before smartphones!

3 Likes

Update…
You can now print the vouchers off

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.