Earning Avios with Shell – and win 10 x 50,000 Avios prizes

I haven’t mentioned Shell Drivers Club on Head for Points for a while, so I thought it was worth doing a quick recap.  Their new competition is a good enough excuse.

Shell Drivers Club is the loyalty scheme for Shell garages in the UK.  Joining is simple – pick up a card at a Shell station when filling up and register it online.  You earn 50 Avios just for registering your card so it is worth doing this even if you switch to a different reward later.

The scheme is simple – you earn 1 Shell point for every litre of petrol you buy, and 2 points = 1 Avios.

As well as Avios, 500 points can be turned into £2.50 of Shell vouchers or £2.50 of Waitrose vouchers. The benefit of taking Avios is that Shell converts your points in multiples of 20 (ie 10 Avios) with no minimum, unlike the 500 point minimum for other rewards.  You receive your vouchers or Avios points every three months.

So … is this a worthwhile way of collecting Avios? 

Probably not, as the sharp-eyed may have spotted above.

If you buy enough Shell fuel to get to 500 points on a regular basis, you will effectively be ‘paying’ 1p per Avios.  This is because 500 points is worth 250 Avios or £2.50 in Shell or Waitrose vouchers.  1p per Avios point is not a great deal as far as I am concerned – although clearly it is still a lot cheaper than topping up your account via a purchase of Avios from BA.

If you only an occasional petrol buyer or Shell customer, it probably is worth taking Avios points.  This is because you are unlikely to reach the 500 litre target required to trigger a £2.50 Shell or Waitrose voucher.

Even if your employer is paying, Tesco offers a better reward structure.  I outlined the best ways to collect Avios points when buying petrol in this post.  Remember that Esso now gives Clubcard points as well which convert to Avios.

Win 50,000 Avios points with Shell

Until September 30th, there is one other reason to fill up at Shell.

As long as you buy more than 20 litres of Shell V-Power Nitro+ fuel, and your Shell Drivers Club account is set to convert to Avios points, you will be entered into a prize draw.  10 winners will each receive 50,000 Avios.

It is not clear whether this competition also applies to British Airways Executive Club collectors or not.  I only know for sure that those who have selected avios.com as their collection partner will be entered.

Full details can be found here at avios.com.

PS.  Apparently over 193 million Avios were collected during the past 12 months just through Shell Drivers’ Club!