We welcome back Rewards Canada’s contributor, Bill W with his next post!
Bill is a true road warrior, his work has him driving and flying across
Western and Central Canada every week while staying in a variety hotels
from a variety of chains. Bill has been reading, following and even
giving Rewards Canada tips and updates for a very long time so it is
only natural to have him share his insights
into the world of Travel Rewards!
Bill’s first post with us discussed the AIR MILES accumulation changes at Shell (read here) and now he brings us the latest offer from Shell that seems to try to appease the negativity around those accumulation changes.
Shell has launched another promotion called Refuel Rewards (Effective from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015) that offers 10 Bonus Miles with a purchase of 225 litres or 25 Bonus Miles with 500 litres in a calendar month.
Doing the quick math on that, it seems to be a way of slightly easing the pain on the change to 1 mile per transaction. Assuming a price point of $1.00 litre, that’s $225 that you have to spend to get the 10 bonus miles. Using their previous formula ($20 for 1 Air Mile, and each $30 thereafter in the same transaction gets an additional 1 Air Mile), that would get you 6-8 Air Miles depending on your gas tank capacity and frequency of fill-up. This means the new offer of 10 bonus points is actually better. Same goes with the 500 litres. Using the same formula, you would get 13-17 Air Miles on the old formula versus 25 on the new monthly promotion. In addition, you would get the 1 Air Mile for each fill-up. But, it is dependent on using a lot of gas in a calendar month. And if you only put in 495 litres, couldn’t get that last 5 litres, you’re only going to get 10 bonus Air Miles. On the surface it seems fine, but for most people it may not be practical, especially with the more fuel-efficient vehicles on the road. They appear to have dropped the model of using dollar values to determine miles awarded and gone on a per litre system instead. (Much like Air Canada, they award Aeroplan Miles based on distance flown, not dollars spent).
If you combine the 2 promotions (Refuel Rewards and the 5X bonus points with minimum 25 litre fill that is currently being offered) and use my previous suggestion of multiple transactions (read all about that here) to maximize miles awarded, you would be able to increase your miles. Assuming you did 9 transactions of 25 litres each, that’s 9 Air miles (5X) = 45 Air Miles. Combine that with the 10 Bonus Air Miles for purchasing 225 litres and you end up with 55 Air Miles for the calendar month. If you could achieve 500 litres, that would be 20 transactions of 25 litres each, therefore 20 Air Miles (5X) = 100 Air Miles. Combine that with the 25 Bonus Air Miles and you would achieve 125 Air Miles for the calendar month.
It is a bit more work, but you can certainly increase your award miles by utilizing the suggestions above. It is up to you to decide if the effort is worth the rewards.