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Earn bonus Avios from Shell via a very silly promotion

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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.

Shell has now launched a silly but fun promotion to earn bonus points:  The Pump Challenge.

The person who devised this should be congratulated for appealing to the inner child in all of us.

This is how it works.

Next time you visit a Shell garage, you need to get your petrol or diesel bill to land on an EXACT amount of money, to the nearest penny.  Manage it and you get a bonus.  Miss it and you don’t.

Here are the bonuses available (remember that 2 Shell points = 1 Avios point):

£30.00 – 50 Shell points

£40.00 – 100 Shell points

£50.00 – 150 Shell points

£60.00 – 200 Shell points

£70.00 – 300 Shell points

£80.00 / £90.00 / £100.00 – 500 Shell points

The logic is interesting.  Whilst some people may spend less than usual (if you tank only takes £45 of fuel you will stop at £40), some others will spend more.  There will also be ‘breakage’ from people who fail to hit the target.  Some people may miss one target and then decide to spend another £9.99 trying to hit the next one.

The bonus points are on top of the standard points.  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 (once a quarter) your points in multiples of 20 (ie 10 Avios) with no minimum, unlike the 500 point minimum for other rewards.

Of course, if you buy enough Shell fuel to get to 500 points on a regular basis, you will effectively be ‘paying’ 1p per Avios (since 500 points is worth 250 Avios or £2.50 in Shell or Waitrose vouchers).  This is not necessarily a great deal.

The Pump Challenge runs until 22nd July so heavy drivers could do quite nicely out of it.  More details can be found on the Shell website here.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (October 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

50,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

Up to 80,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

Get up to 40,000 points as a sign-up offer and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (53)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Nick says:

    A classic! Well remembered. 🙂

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    The Pay At Pumps have the ability to authorise a set spend on the card. Set this to the amount you want and you win every time!

  • bob says:

    Plus old Gold in their first year (maybe others?) currently earn 4x MR points per £1 @ Shell. (Must try my old BMI card!)

    If you lucked out with £70 on the noddle (57 litres) you’d earn 280 MR points + [300 + 57] Shell points ie 458 MR points total.

    Almost worth the inflated cost per litre that Shell charge 🙂

    • Phillip says:

      I guess it depends on where you are; I have 5 Shell garages in my vicinity, and they are actually the cheapest compared to Tesco, Asda and BP also in the vicinity!

      • Fenny says:

        I wish they were the same where I live. 5 or 6p more than Asda and Sainsburys, 3p more than Tesco.

      • Jason says:

        Even with 20p off a litre fuel save. I had to top up my wife’s car yesterday and it really grated paying 117p/l for diesel 🙁

    • TimS says:

      Remember that the 4x points on Gold card only appear if you pay for your fuel in the shop, so if you use pay-at-pump to take advantage of authorising set spend, you’ll only get 2x MR points for the transaction.

  • Steve says:

    Don,t forget to load the app to your phone which gives regular bonus points

    • gnarlyoldgoatdude says:

      Does it? I haven’t had anything for two years. Prior to that I would easily double my tally with app points.

      • GraemeC says:

        For the last few months I have had 100 bonus points offers on the app, with a minimum 10 litre spend, roughly once every week. I have no idea why but I am not complaining….

      • Chris says:

        Have you by any chance changed your phone? When I changed mine I stopped receiving the push notification offers.

        If you pick up a replacement card next time you are in the store and do the replacement in your account online. Then delete the app from your phone and reinstall it with the new card number and you should start receiving the offers again.

        There appears to be different variations of the offer as well. Some require a min of 10/15/25 litres. There may be more but thats the ones I have seen.

  • Douglas Forde says:

    Bit frustrating as I filled up with Shell last night to use my Amex offer. I decided to go to £51 just to make sure. Ah well, at least I got my £10.

  • Daniel says:

    I always do that with the amount of liters anyway, so changing to money won’t be a problem.

    Great!

  • Will says:

    talking of shell i have £10 back off £50 on my amex which i need to use. not sure i can draw enough fuel. can i top this up with shell shop purchases to make the £50?

    thinking of doing that with gold and then spending £40 with this promo

    thoughts?

  • James says:

    Personally I have switched to texaco for my night fills when tesco is unmanned. Texaco star rewards can be exchanged for virgin flying club miles at the rate of 1/1, ie double the normal shell/avios rate. The only problem being you can only change batches of 1000 (but shell only converts every quarter anyway so it’s no different for me)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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