Fuel Card

taffy056

I have just been moved over to an Arval Allstar fuel card by company, basically it allows you to fuel in just about any supermarket petrol station, and I can collect loyalty points, noticed now that tesco only allows 1 point for £2 , which seems a bit tight, what is the best loyalty scheme to use, nectar is one for £1 I think?

fb1969

Nectar is 1 point per litre at Sainsburys (and probably BP as well). Bear in mind that Nectar points are only worth 1/2p each, I think tesco are 1p each but rarely use tesco so can't be sure.

taffy056

Thanks for that, the Morrisons card gives I think 10 points per £1 spent you need about 5k for a £5 voucher , think that means a penny a pound, or is my maths wrong lol

Hammyman

The number of points is irrelevant. There's no point getting 500 points for £500 worth of petrol if you need 700 points to get a Microwave oven at Garage A whereas you'd only get 250 points for £500 worth of petrol at Garage B but only need 250 points for the Microwave.

And TBH, the amount of time and fuel you spend going out of your way just in order to get these points will negate any financial benefit you'd have got from them.

taffy056

Hammyman wrote: »

And TBH, the amount of time and fuel you spend going out of your way just in order to get these points will negate any financial benefit you'd have got from them.

Thanks for your reply, just noticed it The fuel card is the company card, it makes no difference to me if it is out of the way a little, and besides doing 35k-40k a year on average means I fill up at least 3 times a week, and as supermarkets are the cheapest places to fuel, that is where the company wants me to fuel up.

So getting loyalty points means I get something back in return for no effort, so the ones giving the most return makes sense to me

eddddy

Depending on the precise circumstances, the fuel may not be completely "free" for you.

If your company allows you to use the card for personal (non-business) fuel, any personal fuel will be treated as a 'benefit in kind', and you will be taxed on it at your marginal tax rate. This will be done by adjusting your tax code.

Put another way, for every £1 worth of fuel you use when going out of your way to find loyalty points (or driving anywhere else for non-business purposes), you will pay an extra 20p, 40p or 50p in income tax.

(This assumes that searching for fuel is counted as personal use. If you record it as business mileage then it is indeed "free").

smitchy73

I'm pretty sure when the OP is out on the road he passes supermarkets, it just depends on which one. I used to always fill up at BP or Shell, then changed to Tesco's which was okay up until they changed to 1 point for every £2 of fuel, but remember also with Tesco's, if you use the clubcard points and convert them to rewards you get up to 3 times as much, nectar do bonus points as well and have online purchasing using your points for things like Philips, last year I got loads of bonus points with switching energy suppliers and got it in vouchers for Amazon, bought a load of xmas pressies.
Personally I'd have all the loyalty cards and use whichever one you're passing on a regular basis. Also if the OP is being advised to fill up at supermarkets because they are cheaper then that's what he's doing, does that not then count as business miles as he's being instructed to travel to these places by his employers.

taffy056

Sorry keep on forgetting about this thread, the vehicle is strictly for business use only, I must keep records for use including postcodes etc, no personal use is allowed at all, so I am using tesco because as said you can convert to reward points, plus there's a tesco garage just about everywhere, and my company has specifically instructed to fuel up in supermarkets now.

Thanks for the replies