Sixty seconds, twenty-four months, and no cash value at all.
The loyalty terms, written to be read rather than survived. Three numbers govern almost everything here: how fast a bushel appears, how long it lasts, and what it is worth if you try to turn it into money.
The three numbers.
Sixty seconds
- The target
- A bushel earned at any till appears in your wallet within sixty seconds
- Measured at
- The ninety-fifth percentile, over a rolling seven days. Not the average, which flatters
- The guarantee
- Twenty-four hours. That is what a shop with no signal can actually promise
- When we miss it
- The ledger entry carries the real timestamp of the sale, not of the sync
Twenty-four months
- Expiry
- Twenty-four months from the last activity of any kind on the account
- What counts as activity
- A purchase, a check-in, a redemption or simply signing in
- Warning
- Two emails — at ninety days and at fourteen days — and a line on the dashboard
- After expiry
- Gone. We do not reinstate them, because a rule we bend on request is not a rule
No cash value
- Worth
- Nothing, in money. Not on closure, not on death, not on request
- Transfer
- Not between accounts, ever
- Sale
- Prohibited, and any account found selling balances is closed
- Why
- A transferable balance with a stated rate is a currency, and issuing one is somebody else’s regulatory problem
What happens when the tills are offline.
A farm shop in west Oxfordshire loses connectivity. Not often, but reliably enough that any system depending on it being up is a system that will embarrass you in front of a queue.
So the till is the authority when the network is not. It keeps trading, queues its transactions locally and reconciles when it can. Earning is unaffected — the sale is recorded and the bushels land late with the correct timestamp on them.
Redemption is the harder half, because the till does not know your current balance. It allows up to five hundred bushels — five pounds — against the last balance it saw, and it allows it even if that turns out to be wrong. Two offline tills in two buildings can therefore both let you spend the same five hundred. We know. We wear it, the balance floors at zero rather than going negative, and nobody is ever chased for five pounds of loyalty discount.
The alternative is refusing a redemption at a counter with eleven people behind you because a server in a datacentre is unwell, and that is a considerably worse outcome for everybody involved.
- The till keeps trading, always
- Earning is queued and lands with the real timestamp
- Redemption is capped at 500 bushels while offline
- Balances floor at zero and never go negative
- Nobody is pursued for an overdraw we allowed
Every rule that is not in our favour.
| Rule | Why it is written that way |
|---|---|
| Discount applies before bushels | Because the other order would cost you money and save us some |
| Refunds return bushels in full | Including the ones spent on a partially refunded order |
| Balances floor at zero | An overdraw caused by our offline cap is our problem |
| Expiry warnings are sent twice | A single email at fourteen days is a warning designed to be missed |
| A closed account keeps its balance for 90 days | People change their minds, and a scheme should let them |
| Disputes are settled in your favour under 1,000 bushels | Ten pounds is not worth an investigation to either of us |
And the ones that are.
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| Pence round down | A rate you can do in your head is worth more than four pence |
| No transfers between accounts | A transferable balance is a currency, with all the regulation that implies |
| Gift cards earn on spend, not on purchase | Otherwise a card bought and spent earns twice |
| Reviews and follows earn nothing | Incentivised reviews are worthless and the CMA agrees |
| Twenty-four month expiry | Unredeemed balances are a liability that sits on a books for ever otherwise |
| Fraud checks on referral bushels | Because there always have to be |
Nothing on this build takes payment.
This is an unofficial demonstration platform. No card details are collected anywhere, no bushels are issued, and every balance shown is illustrative. The rules above describe how the scheme would behave, not a scheme you are currently enrolled in.
The rules, questioned.
Then the target is wrong and we change the published number rather than quietly redefining what counts. It is measured at the ninety-fifth percentile precisely so that it cannot be rescued by a good average.
No. It has no cash value, on closure or otherwise, and any scheme that says otherwise has accidentally issued a currency.
It is closed with the account. We will not pay it out, and we will not make an executor argue with us about ten pounds of loyalty points.
A person, by email, and under a thousand bushels they are instructed to find for the member without investigating. Above that they look at the till record.
Back to the wallet.
The balance, the earn side and the burn side on one screen.
