BP’s new loyalty club has come under fire after it was revealed that motorists will have to buy 1,360 litres of fuel – worth over £1,760 – to secure the cheapest item in its rewards range, a thermal mug.
BPme Rewards, which replaces Nectar, has been hailed by the fuel giant’s head of UK retail Nikki Grady-Smith as “our exciting new personalised loyalty programme”.
When it was first announced that the company was leaving Nectar to go it alone, Grady-Smith boasted: “We’ve listened to what our customers have been telling us. For the last 12 months, we’ve been working on how we can bring a compelling and rewarding offer that is personalised and reflects BP’s unique combination of convenience retail and high-quality fuels.”
One of the main features of the app-based programme is that it enables customers to fill up their car without having to physically go into a BP garage to pay. BPme uses a customer’s location to check them into a site. On the app, users will then pick their pump number and confirm the amount they would like to fill up with.
A pre-authorisation will then be completed with their bank and unlock their pump so that they can start fuelling. Once they have finished, they will be sent a summary of the transaction on their phone.
Points can be earned on both fuel and shop purchases, with partners including Marks & Spencer and Amazon. Users get one point for each litre of regular fuel or two points per litre of BP Ultimate – the same as the previous BP and Nectar arrangement – with 100 points being worth the equivalent of 50p.
However, this means customers will have to accrue 200 points to get £1 off fuel – and customers would have to top up a typical 35 litre car six times a month to receive this £1 off.
Users will also receive one point per pound spent in BP shops as well as a point per pound for every BP car wash used.
New customers currently receive a registration bonus of 250 points, equivalent to £1.25, while they can bag 100 points if they input their Nectar card details to the app, giving BP access to review their history.
Anika Newjoto, editor of shopping loyalty points site shopperpoints.co.uk, said: “However you look at this, it is very poor indeed. It is basically 0.5% cashback on your shop purchases and even less on your fuel purchases.”
Newjoto does point out that this is the same as the Nectar programme, although there is a far greater range of partners in that scheme from which users can accrue points.
She added: “We obviously don’t know yet how generous BP will be in pushing out special promotions or offers to BPme members, which could make a lot of difference to engagement.
“In general, I have a test for these things which is if I locked the front door on my way to buy petrol and realised that I’d left my loyalty card inside, would I bother unlocking it to go back in? In this case, the answer is no, not for 0.5% back.”
MRM McCann is handling the marketing activity for the launch.
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