Free gasoline is always a worthy goal to shoot for, especially if that's the reward from an airmiles loyalty program. Well, a couple weeks ago, for the first time in 2020, I finally paid for my gasoline at my local Shell gas station. From December 13, 2019 to October 13, 2020 - that's ten months - I managed to redeem $1000 worth of gasoline via the AirMiles.ca loyalty program.
Having been in the AirMiles loyalty program for a long time, I had decided that I would dispense with collecting AirMiles for flights and rewards; instead I chose to collect their cash miles. I ended up accumulating $1000 worth of AirMiles cash miles from 2017 to 2019 mainly from grocery shopping at Safeway, buying gas from Shell and using my credit cards.
In a way, it was surprising that I managed to to stretch out my airmiles points for this long. Of course, covid-19 was a big factor as I did less driving and hence, used less gas. Since March 2020. according to my record, I only spent or redeemed for about $100/month rather than the spending the usual $200 before.
I would say that I got a good deal. Near the end, I was trying to eke out more airmiles from the program as I was attempting to see if I could get free gas for a year.
Throughout the years with the Airmiles loyalty program, I have redeemed for a Hawaiian trip, a set of binoculars, a speaker and the $1000 free gas. So it's been good.
UPDATE - Over the last two months, I ended up spending only $87.02 on gas, with the last fill-up of $37.02 yesterday. So with the 10-month free gas going back to Dec 13, 2019 and assuming the gas holding up past December 13, 2020, that means I only spent $87.02 on gas over the last year. Fantastic, too bad, I can't replicate that over the next year as I have to start from scratch again.
