A Sainsbury’s customer who lost £230 Nectar points to fraudsters was directed to the police to investigate by call centre staff despite it not being a recordable crime.
Loyalty cards have become increasingly necessary since supermarkets introduced exclusive prices for members.
Some customers spend years saving them up to amass a healthy pot to do a large shop or spend at Christmas.
Nectar fraud: Scammers are targeting some Sainsbury’s customers and using their points
Nectar, which launched in 2002, is one of the largest of these loyalty schemes in Britain.
Each Nectar point is worth 0.5p, so to save up £1 worth of Nectar points, customers will need 200 of them.
Suki tends to save her Nectar points to spend on a large shop every 12 to 18 months.
She had amassed 44,300 Nectar points, worth around £230, before receiving an email indicating her points had been spent in a store in Fallowfield, Manchester.
She says that she tends to shop in Wilmslow or Macclesfield and the Sainsbury’s in Fallowfield is not in her vicinity.
When she contacted Sainsbury’s to explain what had happened, her Nectar account was updated with the 44,000 Nectar points that were spent in Argos.
She was then told at the end of April that Nectar’s ‘specialist team for investigation’ had ‘not been able to identify any sign of fraudulent activity’ and the refunded points were removed from her account.
But Suki insisted she doesn’t shop in the Fallowfield store nor had she spent the points.
Instead of investigating the issue again, Nectar directed Suki to contact her local police station.
Nectar, which Sainsbury’s bought in 2018, has been beset by problems with fraud, but little seems to have been done in a world where many financial firms, for example, now use an extra layer of security in the form of two-factor authentication.
This Is Money first wrote about the scam back in 2017, but a look at social media suggests the issue goes back as far as 2011.
Most recently, This Is Money wrote about one Nectar customer, James* who, having spent just shy of two years collecting points, had £370 worth of points cleared by scammers.
The account showed two small transactions in Hackney, East London, and three larger ones in a petrol station in Enfield. The customer lives more than 100 miles away in Gloucester and was not in London that day.
Like Suki, he was told by Sainsbury’s to refer the issue to the police, rather than deal with the problem itself.
When James tried to report the scam to Action Fraud two days after the event, he was told the police couldn’t investigate.
He was told it was ‘not a police recordable crime’ and it could only record a crime on behalf of the person or organisation that was defrauded – in this case, Sainsbury’s.
This directly contradicts what Sainsbury’s told Suki, so This Is Money got in touch to ask what their policy was.
However, it did not clarify whether customers should contact their local police.
Cheshire Constabulary said that victims would be advised to contact Action Fraud in the first instance.
Action Fraud did not respond to a request for comment.
It still doesn’t explain how Suki, and countless others, have managed to have their cards used without their knowledge.
We asked Sainsbury’s how customers are being scammed and what measures it had put in place to prevent further fraud.
It said: ‘The security of our customer accounts is of the utmost importance and we have a range of measures in place to help us detect, and in many cases prevent, fraud.
‘Fraudsters are becoming increasingly sophisticated and using a range of tactics.
‘As I’m sure you understand, we can’t go into detail on the types of fraud we’re seeing or share more specific details about the systems and processes we have in place for obvious reasons.
‘While instances of fraud affect a tiny proportion of our 18m cardholders, if a customer does suspect they’ve been a victim we recommend they contact the Nectar Helpline team, who will thoroughly investigate.
‘In the first instance we review the account to identify any unusual activity, like redemptions completed for items outside of their normal shopping behaviour. If we find this we would refund the points and if it’s less clear we would investigate further.
‘With regards to [Suki], we have contacted her to apologise for her experience and arranged for her Nectar points to be refunded to a new account. We have also added a goodwill gesture for the inconvenience.’