An investigation into loyalty card schemes has found that many of the discounts are “misleading” or “an outright rip-off”, particularly at Boots and Superdrug.
The consumer group Which? analysed the pricing history of almost 12,000 products at health and beauty retailers and supermarkets to see how many times the non-member prices on items with loyalty discounts had been in place during the previous six months.
At Superdrug, one in six products had been at their non-member price for less than half the time. At Boots it was one in ten. This suggests that in some cases prices may have been raised for a brief period before going on “offer”, to make the loyalty discount look cheaper.
Superdrug, for example, was offering Olay’s “The Ultimate Day