Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

72 people will win 1 million Avios points with Shell Drivers Club

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Shell Drivers Club is a partner with both avios.com and British Airways Executive Club.  In December, they are giving away 72 million Avios points in a major competition.

First, a quick reminder of how Shell Drivers Club works.  It is a simple system.  You earn 1 Shell Drivers Club point for every litre of basic fuel you buy and 2 points per litre of V-Power premium fuel.  When you have collected 500 points, you can exchange them for:

250 Avios points (see the BA website for the official details, scroll down)

£2.50 Waitrose voucher

£2.50 Shell voucher

It is worth noting that, because of the relatively poor conversion rate, you may want to take the Waitrose or Shell vouchers instead.  You are effectively ‘buying’ Avios points for 1p by taking the miles option, and that is not the cheapest of prices.

The only advantage of taking Avios is that it is a better deal for small spenders.  If you set up auto-convert, you only need as few as 20 Shell points to qualify to receive Avios (in this case, 10 Avios) at the end of each quarter.  You need to buy 500 litres of fuel to get enough points for a Waitrose voucher!

Shell has launched a big competition for Christmas

Every day until Christmas Eve, Shell is giving away 1 million Avios points to THREE people.  This means that 72 people are going to become Avios millionaires.

Entering is a little tricky.  You need to visit a Shell garage and pay for your fuel with Paypal via the Shell Motorist app on your smartphone.  This instantly knocks out people without a smartphone or who live in rural areas with poor mobile reception.

The minimum purchase is £20.

I have never tried this app, but it apparently allows you to pay without having to visit the cashier.  This could be a handy time saver and will cut down on random junk food purchases in the shop as well.

You can find out more on the Shell Drivers Club website here.  Good luck – it would be fantastic if a Head for Points reader was a winner.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 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

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

25,000 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

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a 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

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

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

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus 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 (83)

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

  • Fenny says:

    I used the app for the first time this weekend, but it wasn’t plain sailing.

    I was offered a £5 credit for using the app before 30 Nov. I needed petrol on Saturday morning, so went to my local Shell station (both the Shell stations near me are listed as using the app). The first place had signs up saying Pay & Go wasn’t working. The second place had no QR code. But I needed *some* petrol to get anywhere else, so put £5 in to get my spend up (I had another offer of points if I spent £20 in total).

    Drove to Rugby (on a busy Saturday morning) on my way to Sheffield. Got to the Shell station, opened the app, scanned the QR code, then spent the next 5 minutes waiting for authorisation. I think the cover over the pumps was probably blocking the signal. Got fed up and left. Pulled round the corner to find Asda were doing a “Not Black Friday” deal of 99.7p/l, so filled up.

    Drove to Sheffield, looked at the appalling price of petrol at the Shell station there and decided not to bother.

    Drove home on Sunday evening, via Rugby, called in at the Shell station and used the app successfully (different pump, no canopy blocking the signal) and got confirmation of the transaction.

    With a minimum spend of £20, I will enter if I’m in Rugby or Leamington and need petrol, but think that the whole thing is a major faff. If it were a simple operation and the petrol was competitively priced, I’d consider it more often. But I get more points from buying coffee & muffins at the services at Tibshelf than buying overpriced petrol.

  • Choons says:

    Tried to use the app on new iPhone, only 2G connection at the filling station so connection was not supported. How about Shell invest some of the money spent on this promo in making sure people can use the app first.

  • oyster says:

    On my way to work I have:
    Shell 1 at 105.9 but doesn’t accept Paypal
    Shell 2 at 105.9 but doesn’t accept Paypal
    Shell 3 at 108.9 that does accept Paypal but is a 4 mile detour
    Sainsbury’s at 103.9

    Hardly worth entering.

  • Phillip says:

    Personally my experience of using the app has been simple, quick and easy. I don’t find that I have to wait long for the authorisation, and I have usually filled up and driven off while others are still standing in the queue. I appreciate others have different experiences of using it, but it’s made my life easier. For me, Shell is the garage of choice as locally they are the cheapest, and also en route between work and home, so I don’t have to think twice about it.

    There is also a staggered bonus points promotion running in December where you get bonus points every time you fill up during the month, >£30, and the more times you fill up, the higher the bonus, starting from 125 points.

    Without the bonuses, I will agree that there are probably better places to collect points/miles on fuel, but the abundance of bonuses handed out by Shell on a weekly basis, put them at the top for me. Not the same for everyone, I appreciate that.

  • will says:

    Some very back of envelope maths:
    Average UK petrol and diesel consumption daily :120 million litres
    Assuming a 40l fill thats 3 million fills per day
    shell has 13% of the market = 390,000 fills per day
    Now:
    1. Not all shell stations offer fill and go (assume 66% do)
    2. Most users don’t use fill and go (assume 5% do)
    390k x .66 x.05 = 12,870 fill and go’s per day.
    Chance of winning = 3/12870 or approx 1 in 4000.

    The market share and daily fuel is accurate. Ave fill is a guestimate. the bottom 2 are plucked from my experience of shell near me and how few people seem to use fill and go when I’m there.

    If you played every day thats 24/4000 or about 1/166. The price for playing – whatever the difference between your cheapest fuel source and shell is, which assuming 20 litres per day cant be more than 5p per litre = £1 per day, £24 to enter. Statistically you’d need to spend £4000 in additional fuel charges in order to win. So the cost for 1 million avios is £4000 in this case.

    By coincidence, that’s pretty much the same as the tesco clubcard conversion rate!

    • Fenny says:

      Not sure how you get a million avios for £4000 spend at Tescos. If that were the case, most families would be flying all over the place on avios fares.

      • TimS says:

        He’s not saying £4000 of spend.
        He’s referring to £4000 in value of clubcard points (ie 400,000 clubcard points).

        • Will says:

          Yes, £4000 of clubcard tokens is 960,000 avios with conversion at £2.50->600 avios.

          My app worked on the first day. Missing authorise the payment!

    • will says:

      That maths might have estimated fill and go usage far too generously. It seems the transaction ID’s you get on the fill and go receipt are actually sequential.

      I filled up on Wenesday at 7pm, then again on Sunday at 7pm. My Sunday Transaction was 17 numbers higher than my Wednesday indicating 17 fill and go’s in 4 days, so average = 4 per day.

      My shell is on a busy road, albeit in an average town so it’s probably fairly representative. 1000 shell stations around the country, not all on fill and go (assume 66%) so daily fill and go’s by this estimate are 666 x 4 = 2664, giving a 3/2664 or 1 in 888 chance of winning, or 1 in 37 if you enter every single day! That’s jolly good odds.

  • giggle says:

    Well I tried this twice. The first time £20 worked and the second time it stopped on it’s own accord at £19.72 instead of £20. Obviously I didn’t qualify for the promotion no matter what I tried.
    My general thoughts are the app was a faff for me to download as it didn’t recognise my existing shell account, I uninstalled it three time before It decided to work. Neither of the petrol pumps recognised the QR code, typing the code in was fine.
    I did notice like the poster above that 50 points had been added to my card for each visits. However with the lack of accuracy at hitting £20, and the lack of choosing the credit card in paypal means I shall make way for the rest of you to persevere 🙂 good luck

    • Will says:

      With regards to choosing the Carr you pay with, you need to log into PayPal (the app is easiest) go to settings then there is an in store payment option – change that to your desired card.

      • Cloud Runner says:

        I always pay with the Jimmy Carr – it’s wonderfully tax efficient 😉

  • BILLY BURKE says:

    I have really gone out of my way to enter this competition but every time I actually find a station that you can use it at and fill up, it stops at just under £20 even though its been authorised for £20. Its really annoying as it stops at £19.80 or £19.60. A complete waste of time so far and quite a bit of effort involved a well. Ive emailed them but you usually wait about 5 days for a reply so will keep you posted.

  • will says:

    Another data point.
    The Shell receipts are sequential for fill and go (well as in my local allocated fill and go receipts sequentially for its own store)

    In a 7 day period my local shell had 34 fill and go’s, and 11 of them were due to a friend and myself targeting this offer so either every store has some HfP’ers doing this and is averaging 34 fills per week, or we are distorting the data and an average would be 23 fills per week. Assuming 666 stores:
    1. 34 x 666 = 22,644 fill and go’s per week, ave 3234 per day (1 in 1078 chance of winning, 1 in 45 if you play every day)
    2. 23 x 666 = 15,318, ave 2188 per day (1 in 729 chance of winning, 1 in 30 if you play everyday)

    • will says:

      I also took the liberty of emailing them to confirm that the £20 is inclusive of VAT, which it is as this was not clear in the T&C. So as long as the pump shows £20 or more, your all good.

    • harry says:

      I hope you win

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

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