Credit card vouchers

I stand corrected, Tinners......

Any time, Ian.

The club will have a lot of empty pitches in peak season from now on if we are anything to judge by.  The only reason we have booked Bransgore in August at £30.70 per night for two of us, is because we can use vouchers to pay for it.  

We are already getting emails reminding us we havent booked for the bank holiday, that's because we go off peak whenever possible to keeps costs down.  The club has out priced itself for many people.  Commercial sites with better facilities: indoor pool, club house etc. are better value for families and even couples.

The barclaycard freedom rewards aren't that appealing, they offer £5 vouchers starting from 1750 points, I'll be getting £30.70 for 3000 points, think I'll shop around for a better incentive scheme, and probably won't be the only one!

The best incentive schemes are on the stores own cards for purchases there. Having looked at what you can get from these cards if you pay for other firms goods or services it is marginally less than Barclaycard.

If you shop a lot in one store go for their card but otherwise the new card is not that bad.

As far as the club is concerned there is nothing they can do the problem is an EC ruling on what the cards can charge for payments. I think the club would have been happy to see the scheme continue but whether it will make any real difference to site occupancy only time will tell.

We found it "good" whilst it lasted and sorry it has been pulled. In our case it has been effective in getting us into the main sites on occassions, simply because it has been "free" to do so. I doubt we will miss it and just adopt using other cards that bring some tangable advantage.

Yes we've just received our letter from Barclaycard as well and we are extremely disappointed about the site night vouchers.  Barclaycard Freedom points don't do anything for us, we spend very little in these stores.   We save our site night vouchers for either a 3 or 4 night stay in peak season to help with the finances.  When you are on a pension, every little helps and the site fees now are so expensive.   Looks like the CLs will be getting a bit more use.   Pity the Caravan Club don't give Senior discounts (excluding high peak) like the Camping and Caravanning Club do, at least that would compensate a little.   I know they offer Mon-Fri discounts on some sites but still doesn't cover a lot of the sites.

The list of stores is where you can redeem points, you earn points on all spend, home or abroad.

We have used these cards for years,even before Barclays run it. We use it to take the grandchildren away for a week at peak time. At first it paid for the week but lately just five nights and if any left over we would use them later in the year. We will be looking around for a different card. Also I have to say that with the high and medium price bands stretching for longer making CC pitches more expensive, after 28 years of caravanning the unthinkable conversation has taken place in our house - is it time to give up.

Since you are limited in the number of vouchers you can use or earn I wouldn't have thought that the vouchers would have a hugely significant effect on future caravanning numbers but like others I will more likely lean towards CL's but they are my preference anyway . Outstanding points are converted to the new Freedom points scheme at a rate of 1 CC point =2.7 freedom points. So the maths is 3000 points =  I free night or 8100 freedom points. The latter can be coverted to store vouchers at the rate of 1750= £5.

The choice then is 1 free night or £23.14 in vouchers ( although you would only be able to get the £20 out). Depending when and where you plan to go you might be better sticking with the freedom voucher conversion and choosing a cheaper site for the caravan. 

Time will tell what effect the loss of the vouchers will have on the occupancy levels. As it stands we will lose probably two or three nights vouchers a year out of possibly fourty. I doubt it will make any difference to our choice but others seem to be looking at reducing there use of club sites. We will all have to wait and see but possibly the club sould now get themselves on the list of businesses we can spend our points on to see if it helps.

The best incentive schemes are on the stores own cards for purchases there. Having looked at what you can get from these cards if you pay for other firms goods or services it is marginally less than Barclaycard.

If you shop a lot in one store go for their card but otherwise the new card is not that bad.

As far as the club is concerned there is nothing they can do the problem is an EC ruling on what the cards can charge for payments. I think the club would have been happy to see the scheme continue but whether it will make any real difference to site occupancy only time will tell.

Yet another reason for voting brexit