"I've had the new upgraded 'REWARDS' for now a few weeks and have earned a whopping accumulation saving of $4.80 on an amount of shopping in excess of $1000.00…(previous returns of 80+ dollars.) Woolworths: not always the fresh food people. Credit:Patrick Scala "Sadly your little orange tag sales items (That the new card now totally depends on.) just don't cut it, cause they're now less common than hens teeth, unicorn horns and rocking horse poop." (sic all that) So Scott says he's taking his business elsewhere, to the local butcher and fruit and veggie bloke, plus the Coles around the corner.

But Scott is just the beginning. In short order Jess Moir adds: "No Qantas Ff points = I no longer shop here….this 'rewards' card is an insult to your customers intelligence Woolworths" and scores 1,200 likes." And there are plenty more comments along the same lines. I can sympathise with Scott. There was a heady period when the algorithms of the Coles and Woolworths loyalty schemes would fight over me. Stay away from one of the chains for a while and there would be emails begging me to come back, offering discounts worth having.

And, in a particularly golden age, Club roasted almond chocolate on special. I'm getting the impression that since Woolworths ditched the frequent flyer points and downgraded the card offering to those elusive orange stickers on stuff I don't want, Coles isn't bothering to try very hard. The Woolworths Rewards changes look like one of those things that sounded good in the boardroom: "The loyalty card is costing a lot of money and not driving consumers to buy the stock we really want to get rid of. What's worse, Qantas is making lots of money out of it – and if there's one thing we at Woolworths hate more than Coles and Aldi, it's suppliers making more than a subsistence living. "So let's change the card by dumping Qantas and only offering an incentive to buy the stuff we're desperate to flog. We'll call it an "upgrade" and no one will ever notice that it's not." Someone forgot to convince Scott Mate.

And what's worse, both chains have dropped the Nestlé Club chocolate line. Instead, there are shelves groaning under Cadbury product forever on special and what look suspiciously like home brands pretending not to be. How Nestlé could fail with the superior dark chocolate bar – obtained by buying the local Small's Club Chocolate for Men back in the 1960s - is another mystery. Maybe if they bought some of those rare Woolworths orange stickers…Nah, probably not.