Your Nectar Prices explained: will they save you money at Sainsbury’s?

The personalised Sainsbury’s offers are now online

Two years after they launched, you can now get bespoke offers on products both in-store and online at Sainsbury’s. Sadly it’s still not that simple to access the savings in-store. Here’s how the promotion works.

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What are “Your Nectar Prices”?

Launched in late 2021 as My Nectar Prices, the scheme was rebranded in early 2023 with the launch of Nectar Prices.

With Your Nectar Prices, you’ll get a lower price on selected items as a Nectar cardholder. These reduced items are based on your shopping habits, so they should be items you’ve previously bought. The more you shop at Sainsbury’s (and scan your card), the more products you’ll likely see.

That’s the theory at least. There are often some very random products listed for me, though that could be since I don’t visit Sainsbury’s much.

There will be up to 10 new offers every week, and they’ll be valid for seven days. A new lot of offers will be shown every week. The discount on each product is valid on multiple purchases for a set amount of time, so if there’s something you really like you can stock up.

Initially these were just in-store, but as of late October 2023 you can now get the discounts online too.

How are they different to Nectar Prices?

How to find Your Nectar Prices

For shopping in-store, you won’t be able to see your offers without logging into the Nectar app or website. Here you’ll be able to view both the products and personalised discounts.

You can do this for online shopping too – but you’ll also see the new lower price listed on those products when browsing.

How to use Your Nectar Prices

There’s no need to activate the offers, as you would with the Weekly Offers promotion (which are still going).

It’s very easy to save online. As long as you have connected your Nectar card to your Sainsbury’s account you’ll automatically pay the lower price when you check out.

Sadly, it’s more complicated in-store as you only save money if you use the SmartShop app or handsets.

Smart Shop is a system where you scan as you go. This allows you to pack as you shop and avoid normal checkouts. Instead you’ll go to a dedicated SmartShop till where you settle up. Occasionally you might be randomly asked to rescan your purchases.

Some stores will have a scanner when you enter the store. You’ll need to scan your Nectar card.

Otherwise you’ll need to download the SmartShop app to your phone (why it couldn’t be in the main Sainsbury’s app I don’t know!). It’s available to iOS 8.0 or later and “most Android phones” (Jellybean or later).

Warning: check the actual price

The Your Nectar Prices discounts are against the price of the product on the day you’re sent the offer (this used to be based on how much the item is selling for at the Beckton Sainsbury’s up to a week before the day the offer is shown to you, but that’s no longer in ther Ts&Cs).

Though it’s unlikely an individual shop has a different price (unless it’s part of a stock clearance), there’s a chance future promotions could change the actual selling price when you actually go to use the offer. This means your discount might actually be less than the one shown to you – or even non-existant.

For the items showing to me on 1 November 2023, all the Your Nectar Prices were lower than what I’d get without the offer, and I’d expect that to be the case most of the time.

However, here’s what I found for some of the discounted items on my account when it launched in 2021:

	Your Nectar Price	Actual selling price*	Actual Saving
Decaff Yorkshire Tea x 160	£3.89	£4.50	£0.61
12x Schweppes Slimline tonic	£3.78	£3.50	-£0.28
Manilife crunchy peanut butter 295g	£2.31	£3.75	£1.44
BOL Thai Green Curry	£2.25	£2.25	£0
McCain Chimichurri chips	£1.64	£3	£1.36

Other promotions had reduced the “full price” on five items, therefore reducing the size of the promised saving. Three items were cheaper thanks to Your Nectar Prices, but still more expensive than my bespoke price.

However in the case of two items, these other promotions meant the price available to everyone was even lower. In fact with the Schweppes tonic the “Your Nectar Price” was higher than the Nectar Price. In the case of the latter, you’d obviously pay the lower price as listed on the shelves.

Since everyone will get different products it’s hard to say how common this will be. And it could also vary depending on the day you use the promotions. The only way to know for certain if it’s a decent discount is to check the price on the shelf when you pay.

Though it’s also a good reminder that just because an item is discounted it doesn’t actually mean you’ll be saving money. So don’t buy anything unless you actually want it – regardless of the amount you might “save”.