Last weekend I posted about a new Foursquare promotion, in association with American Express.
Basically, until mid April, you can save £15 off a £50 spend at a Shell garage when you open a Foursquare account and link your Amex, Lloyds or MBNA card to it. You can open as many accounts as you have Amex cards (including supplementary cards) so there is the potential to get this saving 5 or more times, depending on the Amex cards your family has.
If you are not a normal Shell customer, you may not know that you can collect Avios via Shell Drivers Club.
Joining is simple. Pick up a card at a Shell garage and register it when you get home.
You earn 1 point for every litre of standard Shell petrol you buy, and 2 points per litre of V-Power fuel. If you select to receive Avios as your rewards, your points will be converted into Avios once a quarter.
The rate is not life changing (20 points = 10 Avios, minimum 20 points needed to convert) but better than nothing. You also receive 50 bonus Avios just for registering. The club will also email you occasionally with special offers for bonus points when you hit certain targets for buying petrol.
Combined with the Foursquare discount, this could work out nicely.
(There are also press ads running at the moment for Waitrose, offering a voucher for 5p per litre off Shell petrol when you spend £50 in Waitrose. You could use this alongside the Foursquare deal – just remember to put in enough petrol so the total is still over £50 when the 5p discount is applied!)
Can you use each Amex card just once, or is it once per Shell garage?
Just once per card as usual for these 4sq offers
Did this on Sunday – not amazing earning, but better than nothing! Also remember although it wont earn Shell points you can also apparently buy gift vouchers (inc for Amazon) at some of their garages!
One thing to watch though – some dont show properly on your statement as Shell, requiring a claim to 4sq, which is a pain if using multiple cards.
I must have a bit of an anomaly here; I upgraded to Amex Platinum recently so I have these new cards, but the old cards are working as well.
Do you think it would be possible to sync the new Amex Plat card with a new Foursquare account and get the offer?
Yes as long as your card is still active and you register each card to a separate 4sq account you should be good to go!
It’s also worth noting that Shell Drivers Club have an app (Iphone etc) and you get 50 bonus points (I think) for downloading and the very occasional bonus offer on your phone.
Do you have to make the spend at the same time as checking in or can you check in and spend at any shell garage later ?(before the offer expires)
I would play it safe. When the offer came out I checked in and ‘loaded offer to card’.
On arrival at the petrol station last night, I checked foursq and I had to sync the card and claim the offer again. Weird.
You can check in whenever you want. All of my Harvey Nichols ones before Christmas were done from home, as I don’t have a smartphone!
From what I gather having now got more than £1500 cashback since December from foursquare/xbox live across 8 cards with the nationwide offers (worked now at starbucks, tesco and shell) you can check in at any store at any time BEFORE your purchase – you must click load to card and it will confirm in the app as ‘loaded’. Your then good to go. I cannot guarantee it but I’ve checked in now many times at one location of a company and paid at another with instant notification from foursquare.
For those with multiple amex cards you can buy argos/amazon + many other vouchers at shell. I’m stocking up on argos vouchers for the new ipad from argos when its out.
Thank you for all of your extremely useful help! It;s slightly off topic but RE Amex cards, is there a minimum amount of time you can must hold a card before you cancel?
No. I have read of people cancelling so quickly got the full fee back!
How can I find out which Amex I registered to Foursquare? I can’t remember which one to pay with.
Your easiest way is to check back your emails – “The American Express Network” will have sent you an email confirming the last five digits of the card you synced and as long as you used the same email address then that will correspond with your Foursquare account.
If you’re having major problems then the safest thing to do is probably to unsync all your cards and sync them again – go to https://sync.americanexpress.co.uk/UnSync/StartAuth/Foursquare to unsync.
Found it! Thanks very much.
I said back when all this started that you must keep a list of each card, the login and password on FS for that card, and which offers you have already redeemed …….!
There’s a new promo now, however no free money this time. Most are spend 50 get 25 credit. The Starbucks one is back though at the same 5 for 10.
More Amex/FourSquare deals available now:
Harrods: Spend £50, get £25 back (1-28 February)
House of Fraser: Spend £50, get £25 back (1-28 February)
GAP: Spend £50, get £25 back (1-28 February)
Banana Republic: Spend £50, get £25 back (1-28 February)
Carphone Warehouse: Spend £25, get £10 back (1-28 February)
Shell: Spend £50, get £15 back (until 18 April)
Starbucks: Spend £10, get £5 back (until 13 February)
Pizza Hut: Spend £30, get £15 back (until 6 March)
Had a Shell card sitting in my wallet for ages – thanks for the info