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!
About Head for Points
Also worth noting Shell is currently running a triple Avios promotion, that V Power fuel already earns double and of course the usual weekly 100 bonus points for filling up with V Power fuel. Not at all surprised by the 193 million figure!
At the moment Shell are giving 6 points for every litre of V-Power Nitro+ and as a member of the Drivers Club I get a monthly offer of 100 points for just putting in 10 litres. So 160 shell points for just 10 litres of fuel isn’t too bad.
What is this Drivers Club of which you speak and do all its members get this offer?
Of course, V Power is also quite a lot more expensive than the regular fuel. However, with the recent 10p off Waitrose voucher brought my recent fill up way below Tesco, which for me makes odd trip to Shell well worth while.
I would argue that, personally, I get more mileage with V Power fuel than regular fuel, enough to actually get more miles to my £. So the cost is relative. Granted, this may not be the case for all cars/drivers.
I get 10-15% more mileage on V Power in my motorcycle and have tested this over a long period. Apparently it’s not supposed to be this good but it’s never less than about 8% better and the engine seems to run better.
And for first year Gold card holders, you currently seem to get 4x MR points when you pay in store (but only 2x for Pay at Pump).
I’ve never been able to work it out, but how many extra miles per litre/gallon would you have to achieve to cover the extra 10p a litre ? ie If I’m already getting 50mpg, what extra would/should V Power give me ?
Let’s say you currently pay £1.30/litre. You’d have to get at least 53.84 mpg to be better off
Always show your working… (1.40/1.30)*50 = 53.84
Not so good for Northern Ireland. No Shell garages here.
Since I am buying loads of gift cards inc 3V at Tesco so getting 20p off per litre I find it hard to see how Shell fuel can be cheaper (yesterday unleaded was 125.9 less 20 per litre). Even when I had a Jaguar or BMW I never bought the more expensive petrol.
I also get Avios for the new BAPP card which is more than on the actual fuel.
I’m sure that it varies across the country, but I have always found Shell petrol stations to be very thin on the ground.
Recently received some Waitrose coupons from my waitrose that included 10p /l off on VPower and from memory when I stopped at the local garage they had a short term offer for triple Shell points on V Power
OT – Forgive me if this is old news, I’ve just noticed on avios.com that you can now purchase up to 35,000 pa instead of 27,000. BA Exec still shows only 27,000. No interest to me but might be useful info for someone 🙂
Don’t forget to use your shell driver’s club card BEFORE you pay unlink me the other day. The website is very wishy-washy about whether they will add the points retroactively. I’ve contacted customer services and am now waiting for an answer…
*unlike
I’ve had an email back and they are going to give me the points but I need to give them when/where/how much details for them to do it. I might need to buy more fuel though to ensure I enter the competition I would have thought however!
On the subject of shell, they refused to honour the last double avios promotion they had on. Not impressed.
Doesn’t work for me, more like 5-8p more a litre here @ Shell in Cornwall.
Shell has been running a 100 bonus points promotion a month using their the drivers card app which can be downloaded from iTunes minimum purchase is 15 litres. I have been awarded the bonus for the past 3 months. Just checked now Shell seems to have stopped the promotion, it may come back again.
Has anyone else got the HKG email content? Said it failed to upload? Tnx