Boots, Superdrug and the big supermarket chains have been accused of “murky and confusing” practices on loyalty card offers that may not be as good as they appear. Boots was responsible for one of the most egregious examples of what the consumer group Which? called “dubious discounts” highlighted by its investigation into the pricing history of almost 12,000 products on a “snapshot day” in May. The chemist offered an Oral-B iO7 electric toothbrush to loyalty card holders for £150, marking this as a discount to the £400 price for non-members.
However, the product was only priced at £400 for 13 days before the offer appeared – before that it was £150 for everyone. Which? said it found 649 products at Boots where the price for non-members was raised on the same day the loyalty promotion began. Boots said its loyalty scheme enabled customers “to make genuine savings on over 8,000 products”.
While some of those products could have been on a different kind of promotion immediately before the loyalty discount was launched, Which? said the evidence raised “questions about the tactics at play” and whether the non-member prices used to highlight the “supposed savings” were genuine. It said 10% of the chemist’s products subject to a loyalty-scheme “discount” had been at the comparable price for non-members for less than half the previous six months. At Superdrug, one in six (16%) of the products had been at the non-member price for less than half the .