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meinnit

I have a question about the inactivity clauses applied to Airmiles account.

There appear to be 2 clauses:

1. Airmiles Members who have not had any miles credited to their Airmiles Account in the last 12 months will be charged an administration fee of £30 when making a redemption booking.

2. If you have not had an Airmile credited to your account for 24 consecutive months, all Airmiles that you have accrued to date will automatically expire without further notice.

I took up the Tesco Clubcard offer last year of double miles when you exchange vouchers. I had miles added on 13/03/10 and the double miles added on 08/04/10.

My question is do I need to add any further miles by 13/03 to avoid the £30 admin fee when redeeming miles? Or have I misinterpreted this and I only need miles added within the last 12 months when I come to making a redemption?

Thanks in advance!

NonGeographicalMan

meinnit wrote: »

I took up the Tesco Clubcard offer last year of double miles when you exchange vouchers. I had miles added on 13/03/10 and the double miles added on 08/04/10.

My question is do I need to add any further miles by 13/03 to avoid the £30 admin fee when redeeming miles? Or have I misinterpreted this and I only need miles added within the last 12 months when I come to making a redemption?

I think you will find that 8/4/10 will probably be the relevant date to start the 12 month clock running as the second event of adding the double miles will also be considered as being further collection of Air Miles on to your account.

But in any event the £30 fee for redeeming miles is only payable if you haven't earned a mile in the last 12 months when you come to actually redeem Air Miles. So you could wait another 6 months as long as you have another mile credited by one day before the day you want to redeem miles and still avoid the £30 fee. But do remember how long it takes for activity at a Shell petrol station in particular to end up earning you Air Miles (it could be 6 months later) and even with the Lloyds Duo Amex Air Miles card the cycle to convert them to Air Miles is potentially getting on for a couple of months from the date on which you make a purchase depending on your statement account date. Air Miles are earned most quickly by making purchases at one of the retailers they link to from their website while logged in to your account.

So the key cut off date to worry about is the 2 year cut off when all your Air Miles are wiped out. As Air Miles take some time to credit to your account you don't want to even get close to that.

If you buy petrol then in my opinions its best to get a Shell Drivers Club card and fill up at Shell from time to time to make sure you don't ever fall foul of either the 12 or 24 month rules.

meinnit

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

I think you will find that 8/4/10 will probably be the relevant date to start the 12 month clock running as the second event of adding the double miles will also be considered as being further collection of Air Miles on to your account.

But in any event the £30 fee for redeeming miles is only payable if you haven't earned a mile in the last 12 months when you come to actually redeem Air Miles. So you could wait another 6 months as long as you have another mile credited by one day before the day you want to redeem miles and still avoid the £30 fee. But do remember how long it takes for activity at a Shell petrol station in particular to end up earning you Air Miles (it could be 6 months later) and even with the Lloyds Duo Amex Air Miles card the cycle to convert them to Air Miles is potentially getting on for a couple of months from the date on which you make a purchase depending on your statement account date. Air Miles are earned most quickly by making purchases at one of the retailers they link to from their website while logged in to your account.

So the key cut off date to worry about is the 2 year cut off when all your Air Miles are wiped out. As Air Miles take some time to credit to your account you don't want to even get close to that.

If you buy petrol then in my opinions its best to get a Shell Drivers Club card and fill up at Shell from time to time to make sure you don't ever fall foul of either the 12 or 24 month rules.

Thanks for your reply. It seems I was misinterpreting the rules. So it's not as bad as it seems for me as I'm not looking to redeem any time soon. Thanks!

NonGeographicalMan

meinnit wrote: »

Thanks for your reply. It seems I was misinterpreting the rules. So it's not as bad as it seems for me as I'm not looking to redeem any time soon. Thanks!

Only the 2 year mile expiry rule is a big problem. The one year inactivity £30 booking fee only has to be paid if you must make a booking before you can get another Air Mile credited to your account.

ukdeebee

My husband has recently opted to use a nearby Shell Garage to refuel all his company vehicles (26 cars/vans and lorries) i was wondering if i would be able to get 26 copies of one card and attach them to the vehicles key rings and have everyone collecting airmiles for me? is this possible and can normal airmiles be converted into BA miles? The company did use its own fuel tank but now fuel is so expensive and also there was a recent break in and thousands of pounds of diesel was drained from the tank so this is a safer option for the company, i know all the lads driving the vehicles wont be bothered about collecting the points for themselves so it seems a shame to let all those airmiles go to waste, has anyone got any experience of this or any advice?
(sorry i did paste this question on another thread but this one seems more appropriate)

NonGeographicalMan

ukdeebee wrote: »

I know all the lads driving the vehicles wont be bothered about collecting the points for themselves so it seems a shame to let all those airmiles go to waste, has anyone got any experience of this or any advice?

What exactly makes you say that. The whole point of the Shell Drivers Club scheme is surely that the benefits normally to the "Driver" who fills up at Shell and not to the owner of the vehicle.

You could of course try this line of argument with your "lads" but you may find that some of them do indeed object strongly and want to collect the Shell Drivers Club Points/Air Miles themselves. If they don't think the points are worth collecting then how come that you think they are worth collecting.

At https://www.shelldriversclub.co.uk/smart/other/Other3.html?site=en-en they do let you add points one from Shell card to another if you have lost one so I suppose this is the only way you could join up all the Shell Points from your "lads" (don't you have any "lasses" driving for you) on to one account.

The bottom line is that one of your employees might actually make a formal complaint to Shell or Air Miles if you try to do what you are proposing to do and this might well be a violation of their terms and conditions. Also have you never thought that rather than trying to simply swipe all the Air Miles yourself you should instead be trying to educate your lads about the benefits of Shell Drivers Points and/or the Air Miles scheme so that they can then enjoy a minor employee perk that might actually make them feel good about working for your husband. Whereas knowing the wife of the boss wants to swipe all their Shell driver points might be just the kind of thing that makes them feel bad about working for your husband's firm...,:eek::(

Savvy_Spender_South

I suppose it depends who pays the fuel bill. The driver in this case gets paid a wage to fulfill a job, the business owner has an amount of right to try to make savings and incentives to their own life too.

I have not read the T&C at shell as i do not use their scheme but provided collection is within their annual limits, the fuel is legitimately purchased so the collection return is in line with their principles.

ukdeebee

its a scaffold firm and me and 3 other "lasses" run the office etc but honestly all the young guys that work for us dont give a monkeys about "shell points" my hubby pays for all the fuel so i dont see whats wrong with using the points, if the boys want the points then they are welcome to them but if they are just going to waste then i thought i may as well try to find a way of utilizing them. i have been able to book some flights recently with the miles ive managed to collect over the last few years with my tescos card and my BA amex, it was just a thought and i certainly wouldnt want to offend anyone with my suggestion.

ukdeebee

Also i should point out that the vehicles dont actually belong to the drivers themselves, they are parked at the company location overnight and picked up each morning by the employees and used just for the working day. All vehicle, fuel and running costs etc are paid for by the company.
Ive emailed Shell drivers customer services to see what they say as i dont want to break any rules.

NonGeographicalMan

ukdeebee wrote: »

its a scaffold firm and me and 3 other "lasses" run the office etc but honestly all the young guys that work for us dont give a monkeys about "shell points" my hubby pays for all the fuel so i dont see whats wrong with using the points, if the boys want the points then they are welcome to them but if they are just going to waste then i thought i may as well try to find a way of utilizing them. i have been able to book some flights recently with the miles ive managed to collect over the last few years with my tescos card and my BA amex, it was just a thought and i certainly wouldnt want to offend anyone with my suggestion.

I agree that some Shell customers clearly don't collect the points and I imagine some staff members at Shell petrol stations may keep a Shell Drivers Club card behind the till belonging to another relative at a different home address from their own. However the scheme clearly is set up as a Driver scheme and has not been set up with vehicle fleets in mind.

The only possible loophole is the business of it being permitted to have the miles from a lost card credited to a new card but I don't know if the lost card already has to be registered to permit this. And the Points transfer process appears to be a manual process involving one of their customer service agents who might object to multiple transfers involving the same person at the same address.

It would have been easier to do what you want to do in the days 20 years ago when Shell handed out 1 2 or 5 Air Miles vouchers to customers in relation to the amount of fuel put in the vehicle. A fleet fuel card that gives the business some kind of discount for volume fuel purchases would be much easier to set up.

What you are trying to do is to take loads of Air Miles from a scheme clearly set up for personal Driver use and make it in to a fleet scheme and this is not what it was intended to do.

As to being able to use the Air Miles it depends on the route. If you want to fly from Heathrow to Aberdeen regularly then flights are available all the time right up to one day before travel. Also availability is fairly good to many USA and South American airports outside the peak holiday weeks. However there is almost no availability to Australia or New Zealand or many airports in the Mediterranean for most of the time.

Lastly with regards to all the lasses working in the office and the guys all being drivers you do realise that is meant to be 2011 and and that its not still 1951? Also I think I know your kind of firm and I would tend to place money on the fact that the ordinary staff (that is those staff members who are not the owner or his wife) probably don't get pensions either?:eek: