You'll often hear points and miles enthusiasts and those that write about the industry make reference to dipping. That is double dip, triple dip and so on. What this refers to is earning multiple points, miles or other incentives for a single purchase or action. For most transactions the double dip is most common. It is your base earn in the loyalty program (the first dip), and then earning on your credit card for that purchase (the second dip). However, add in any bonuses or other promotions and that can grow to a triple or quadruple dip or even higher. Recently a combination of standard offers and limited time promotions allowed me to complete a quintuple dip when fueling up for gas at Shell!
Achieving the quintuple dip
How did I achieve a quintuple dip? Well it took three standard offers and two limited time promotions to do so. The standard offers were the base AIR MILES earn, the base credit card earn and the discount that Shell offers to CAA members. Then, to round out the big time dip there was a bonus miles offer from Shell and an Amex Offers promotion to receive statement credits for making purchases at Shell.
Dip 1: Base AIR MILES Earn
The base earn rate for Bronze fuel at Shell is one AIR MILES Reward Miles for every 20L purchased. Seeing that I purchased right around $60 worth of gas that amounted to just over 30 litres for one base mile earned.
Dip 2: Bonus AIR MILES Earn
AIR MILES sends out monthly emails to earn bonus miles at Shell for that month and you have to click the link to opt-in. I always opt-in even though I'm not really a Shell guy but I always opt-in just in case I do stop at Shell for gas. I'm glad I did opt-in as it allowed me to earn 50 bonus AIR MILES on this purchase. (This 50 was part of total 75 bonus mile offer in place, the first 25 were earned the week before)
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The base earn rate plus the monthly bonus
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Dip 3: CAA Discount
The third dip is not points earning but rather a discount for bringing in yet another program. If you are a CAA member you can enjoy 3 cents off per litre at participating Shell stations. I have my CAA membership # set up in the Shell App so the discount is automatically applied by utilizing Shell EasyPay.
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Image courtesy of the CAA
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Dip 4: Points earned on the Platinum Card
My four visits to Shell during the month of June were all paid for with my Platinum Card from American Express. These visits earned the base 1 point per dollar spent that the card offers. Normally I pay for gas with my American Express Cobalt Card or American Express Gold Rewards Card since both of them offer 2 points per dollar on gas but for those four ~$60 purchases it was worth it to forego the 240 or so extra points I would have earned for the $20 in savings provided by the 5th dip!
Dip 5: Statement credits earned on the Platinum Card
Up until June 30 there was an Amex Offers promotion where you could earn a $5 statement credit on a $60 purchase from Shell and you could earn it up to 4 times. I only received it on my Platinum Card so as you have already learned, that is why I used it for these purchases.
To ensure I maximized this offer from American Express and Shell I actually made sure to only buy around $60 of gas each time so that I could make it to Shell more often. My SUV has a 100L tank so I purchased less than half a tank on June 10 and about the same on June 11 so that I could earn the credit twice instead of only once had I filled the tank completely on the 10th:
And that is how I achieved a quintuple at Shell for the June 10 purchases. The other three purchases were all quadruple dips since they didn't earn any bonus AIR MILES Reward Miles.
The value of the Quintuple Dip in numbers:
- Dip 1 - $0.105
- Dip 2 - $5.25
- Dip 3 - $1.00
- Dip 4 - $0.60
- Dip 5 - $5.00
The total value is nearly $12 on a $60 purchase. Not bad at all! And that's taking into account the minimum value for American Express Membership Rewards points of 1 cent per point. In all honesty I will most likely redeem them for 4 to 6 cents a piece (or more) which would put my total return around $15.
Wrapping it up
One of the reasons behind American Express having Amex Offers is to encourage cardmembers to use their cards at places they may not regularly shop at. And it works. I'm normally a Petro-Canada person out of convenience plus I do like the value I get out of Petro-Points when redeeming for car wash cards. However for most of June I switched to Shell to earn those $5 statement credits and everything else earned was icing on the cake. Now I didn't go out of my way to go to find a Shell but strategically stopped at their stations when I could. For July, it will be back to Petro-Canada and what perfect timing as they are offering triple Petro-Points for fuel purchases this month!
