Low Stakes Conspiracy : Sky’s weekly free treats are just a scam to get me into Sainsbury’s.

Low Stakes Conspiracy : Sky’s weekly free treats are just a scam to get me into Sainsbury’s on a regular basis which they probably receive commission for.

So, with the Sky app to get your voucher for free Sainsbury’s stuff you really need to be in-store because it’s got a time expiry on it once activated, but you can’t see any problems until you attempt to activate it. So …

My main common experience is to go to the store to see if I can get my free whatever and find that they’re totally out of stock.

My second common experience is when it comes back in stock a few days later, I go to claim the free voucher and it says “that they have all been used for this offer and I’ll need to wait for next weeks offer” (I assume there’s a finite amount of vouchers for the whole of the uk).

My annoying one this week was activating the voucher for Tony Chocolonely bites and getting to the till and it refusing to take the voucher. The Sainsbury’s staff telling me that they’ve been having problems with this one all day and to try later in the week (even with me saying i don't think it'll work later in the week as it expires, but they say "yes it will"). So then I come back later in the week and I go to activate it and it says “we’re experiencing technical problems”. I return another two days and eventually the offer has updated to be a bar of chocolate instead so I try again and it says “you’ve already used the voucher” … ffs, no i haven't!

So basically at this point I’ve made 4 or 5 visits to Sainsbury’s which I wouldn’t have ever made and still not got my Sky VIP “Treat on Us” reward.

Ostensibly this free thing should be a good thing, but it's more of an annoyance recently and actually I'd much rather my bill was £10 cheaper than I get £10 of snacks from Sainsbo's - especially as it seems impossible to ever claim them.