Savvy Waitrose shoppers will no longer be able to use two money-off schemes to get a double discount on shopping, after the supermarket changed the rules.
The double discount was being used by customers with both a discounted newspaper subscription and a myWaitrose loyalty card.
Formerly these could be used together to take off at least twice the value of a newspaper from a shop of at least £10.
The supermarket was part of a discounted newspaper scheme, where customers save money by paying upfront for a yearly subscription and getting money-off vouchers in return.
For example, if you buy a paper copy of the Guardian it costs £2.50 on a weekday and £3.50 on weekends. But if you subscribe, you pay £47.69 for 12 months, or around £1.56 a day, according to Martin Lewis' MoneySavingExpert.
On top of that, the myWaitrose card lets you get the price of some newspapers knocked off your shop if you spend at least £10 in store.
So using the Guardian example, you could get £2.50 off a £10 basket of shopping on a weekday.
Clever shoppers realised the two discount schemes could be used together.
Buying a copy of the Guardian on a weekday with your £10 shopping, for example, would mean getting a £2.50 or £3.50 discount, plus a newspaper, and all for an outlay of £1.56. Signing up to myWaitrose is free.
The technique only worked with the newspapers signed up to the scheme.
These are the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Guardian, Observer, Sun, Sun on Sunday, Times and Sunday Times.
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But Waitrose has cottoned on to the scheme, and banned the two discounts from being used together on June 16.
Now shoppers cannot use subscription vouchers with any myWaitrose card discounts. But if you want you can use the card to get a paper in a different transaction.
A Waitrose spokesperson said: "In line with other voucher and offer schemes, if a customer now chooses to take advantage of this offer, we are no longer able to accept a prepaid subscription voucher as part of the same purchase to avoid Waitrose removing the price of a newspaper from a customer’s shopping twice in a single transaction.
"We will of course still accept prepaid subscription vouchers at Waitrose and if a customer chooses to take advantage of the myWaitrose newspaper offer, they are still able to use their prepaid subscription voucher, at a different time."
Families wanting to save money on their shop can now check supermarket prices against discount chains like B&M and Home Bargains.
Trolley.co.uk claims to have 130,000 products and 7,000 brands listed on its website, with The Mirror counting at least 16 retailers so far.
As well as both branded and own-brand products from the Big Four supermarkets - Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s - it also has items listed from Aldi, B&M and Home Bargains.
