Supermarket loyalty cards do offer genuine savings, the UK’s competition watchdog has found, but it said people should still shop around.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) examined 50,000 products on loyalty price promotions across Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Co-op and Waitrose.
It found “very little evidence” that supermarkets were inflating their “usual” prices to make promotions look like a better deal.
But it said that while the discounts were legitimate, its review “has shown that loyalty prices aren’t always the cheapest option, so shopping around is still key”.
“We know many people don’t trust loyalty card prices,” said George Lusty, the CMA’s interim executive director of consumer protection. “Which is why we did a deep dive to get to the bottom of whether supermarkets were treating shoppers fairly.”
It said about nine out of 10 loyalty promotions it looked at offered genuine savings against the usual in-store price.
Customers made an average saving of between 17% and 25% across the five supermarkets the CMA examined.
The watchdog also surveyed shoppers and said that nearly 70% of those it spoke to think loyalty pricing offers decent savings.
However, there remains a significant amount of mistrust among consumers towards loyalty promotions.
The CMA said: “A significant proportion – 40% – say they do not trust loyalty prices are a genuine saving on the usual price.”