Loyalty points

Dickens loyalty points: the terms

Last updated: [DATE OF PUBLICATION]

These terms take effect when the loyalty scheme launches, alongside the rest of the Dickens website. We will put the exact date on this page once the site goes live. Points only start building from that date; a purchase made before launch does not earn points retroactively.

Joseph Schembri, trading as Dickens. Dickens is a sole trader, not a company, so your contract is with Joseph Schembri personally. Bisazza Street, Sliema, SLM 1640, Malta. VAT number MT10611512. There is no company registration number, because a Maltese sole trader is not entered in the Registry of Companies. Email info@dickens.com.mt. Telephone +356 2133 3562.

1. The short version

• You earn 1 point for every €1 you spend, on the amount you actually pay, whether you buy at the shop counter or on this website.
• 100 points are worth €2 off a future purchase. That is 2% back.
• Points expire three years after you earn them. If you have not used them by then, we will email you about a month beforehand.
• You need to be signed in, with your account identified, for a purchase to earn points, whether that is at the counter or online.
• Give us your birthday and we will take 3% off your order on the day, as a member benefit: not points, just a discount.
• Points are not money. They cannot be exchanged for cash and cannot be transferred to anyone else.

2. Who can join

You need a Dickens online account. It is free, and you must be at least 18 years old to join. That is higher than the legal floor for a young person to open an online account for themselves in Malta: 13, under the Processing of Child's Personal Data in relation to the Offer of Information Society Services Regulations, S.L. 586.11, regulation 4. We set it at 18 because a points balance built on drone and electronics purchases is not something we think a child should be holding.

One account per person. If you already shop with us at the counter, your online account is matched to your counter record by email address. Where one email address belongs to more than one customer record, a member of staff checks it by hand rather than guessing; we would rather you waited than showed you somebody else's history.

3. How you earn points

1 point for every €1 you spend, counting what you actually paid, including VAT, rounded down to whole points. €99.99 earns 99 points, not 100.

You earn on:

• purchases at the shop counter, where your account is identified at the time of sale;
• purchases on this website, when you are signed in at checkout.

If we do not know it is you when you pay (at the counter or online), there is no way to add the points afterwards.

You do not earn points on:

• refunds, returns, corrections, or a sale that comes to zero or less;
• anything bought before the scheme launched; we do not backdate points.

4. What points are worth, and how you spend them

100 points = €2. One point is worth 2 cents.

Points come off the price of a future purchase. To spend them, apply your balance at checkout on this website. You can use as much of your balance as your basket's goods are worth; points bring down what you pay for the goods, not the delivery charge. Any points you have left over stay in your account.

Points are valued at the rate in force on the day you spend them, not the rate on the day you earned them. If we ever change what a point is worth we will say so on this page before the change takes effect.

You cannot exchange points for cash. You cannot transfer them to another person or another account. They have no value outside a Dickens purchase.

5. When points expire (please read this one)

Points expire three years after the day you earn them.

They expire point by point, not in a block: points earned in March 2027 lapse in March 2030, and points earned the month after lapse the month after that. When you spend points, we always use your oldest ones first, so the ones closest to expiring go first.

If you have not used points by the time they are due to expire, we will email you about a month beforehand, so you have a chance to spend them.

A change to the expiry rule never applies backwards. Points already sitting in your account keep the expiry period that applied on the day they were earned. If we shortened the window tomorrow, it would only affect points earned after that.

We chose three years rather than the more usual one or two because most people who shop with us do so occasionally, and a shorter window would quietly expire almost everybody's balance before they came back.

6. Refunds, returns and cancelled orders

If you return something and we refund you, we take back the points that purchase earned. If you have already spent them, your balance can go negative until you earn it back.

If you paid part of a purchase with points and then return the item, we give the points back to your account and refund the money you paid. The returned points keep their original expiry date; returning something does not buy you more time.

None of this affects your legal rights. Your two-year legal guarantee on goods bought from us, and your 14-day right to change your mind on anything bought at a distance, are unaffected by anything on this page.

7. Your birthday discount

Tell us your birthday on your account page (day and month, we do not need the year) and we will take 3% off your order on the day itself, as a thank-you for being a member. This is a straight discount, not points, and it does not affect any points balance you are also spending.

8. If your account closes

If you close your Dickens account, or ask us to delete your personal data, any points you hold are lost. We cannot hold a points balance for a person we no longer identify.

We keep the record of the points themselves (the ledger entries, with your name removed) because it is part of our accounting records and we are required to keep those. That is explained in our privacy policy.

If we close your account because of fraud or serious misuse of the scheme, your points are cancelled.

9. Changes to the scheme

We may change these terms, the earn rate, what a point is worth, and the expiry period. Changes only ever apply going forward: points you have already earned keep the rate and the expiry they were earned under.

If we change a term of the scheme, we will publish the change on this page at least 30 days before it takes effect.

If we ever end the scheme entirely, we will give you at least 90 days' notice on this page and by email, with a reminder to spend your points before the scheme closes, and you will be able to spend them during that period.

10. Mistakes

If points are added to your account in error (a duplicated sale, a system fault, a refund we did not catch), we may correct the balance. We will tell you what we changed and why. Every change to your balance is recorded and we can show you the entries that produce it.

11. Complaints

If you think your balance is wrong, email info@dickens.com.mt or ring +356 2133 3562. Tell us the date and roughly the amount of the purchase. We keep a full record of every points entry, so we can usually tell you exactly where a number came from.

If we cannot settle it, you can take a consumer complaint to the Office for Consumer Affairs at the MCCAA (Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority); see our complaints procedure for how.

12. The legal bits

These terms are governed by Maltese law. Nothing here takes away rights the law gives you as a consumer, and if any part of these terms turns out not to be enforceable, the rest still stands.