Supermarket loyalty schemes DO offer real savings of up to 25%, competition watchdog says

British supermarket prices offered through loyalty schemes do provide genuine savings, the competition regulator has said. Loyalty schemes such as market leader Tesco's Clubcard and Sainsbury's Nectar offer significantly lower prices for members and have proved hugely successful for the UK's biggest supermarkets. And today the CMA said it had analysed around 50,000 grocery products on promotion and found very little evidence of supermarkets inflating their 'usual' prices to make loyalty promotions seem like a better deal. Checkout crunch: The growth of supermarket loyalty schemes has been criticised by shoppers and consumer champions, who suspected that discounted prices were actually the real ones The CMA found shoppers can make an average saving of 17 to 25 per cent buying loyalty priced products at the five supermarkets examined - Tesco, Sainsbury´s, Waitrose, Co-op and Morrisons. 'We know many people don´t trust loyalty card prices, which is why we did a deep dive to get to the bottom of whether supermarkets were treating shoppers fairly,' said George Lusty, CMA interim executive director of consumer protection.