Dean Mayhew, a 31-year-old father of three, got the QR code tattooed on the wrist. It works perfectly under the scanner at his bank.
He said that he received the tat in August 2013 and has been using it twice daily.
Dean claims that he had no regrets buying the ink, despite rising food prices.
Dean, a scaffolder from Bideford, north Devon, said: “People just say that it’s typical me – sometimes I’m not the cleverest of guys but they’ve said that for me, it’s pretty genius.
He added: “I’ve been thinking of getting [the tattoo] These have been my experiences for the last three to four months. Every time I go in there they ask if I’ve got my Clubcard but it’s always at home or I’ve lost it.”
Dean spent half an hours getting the tattoo at A Star Tattoo (Surrey), last year. To make sure it worked, Dean went to Tesco Express.
“I tried the self-checkout, but it was quite awkward to use because I wasn’t doing it right, so I said, ‘let me go to the guy on the till’. I went up there and it worked,” Dean said. “He couldn’t believe it.
“Every time I go in there they’re shocked and it’s good to see people’s faces. I could use the one on my phone, but I want to use it on my arm as it’s funny.
“Anything you can do with a normal Clubcard I can do with my arm. The tattoo is still healing.
“I don’t know if it will still work when it’s healed but I don’t see why it wouldn’t. I don’t regret stuff – I’m not one of those people.
“I don’t think it looks bad – I think it looks pretty cool.”
Dean’s tattoo artist Dan Rossetter said he’d never had a customer ask for a Tesco Clubcard throughout his 12-year career to date.
“At first I said, ‘are you sure you want to do this’. But I saw the fun within it and thought, ‘let’s do it’,” he said.
“I was anxious about how well it was likely to work as it’s an intricate bar code but Dean was quite relaxed about it and was going for the fun aspect – he said if it didn’t work it wasn’t the end of the world.
“I did the tattoo and we went to the till and a person with a scanner tried and on the first go it worked. Dean’s face lit up and I realized it did work.
“I think I’m always quite a fun outgoing type of guy anyway so it was a bit of banter and there is the element of it being a genius idea – it’s not something I would have come up with off the top of my head, to be honest, I thought it was quite cool.”
Dean also said that he was considering getting a Nectar cards for Sainsbury’s, as he sometimes forgets.
“I did think about getting another one but that’s a whole other thing,” he said. “I quite often go between Sainsbury’s and Tesco’s.”
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