Finances | Financial Crooks

It’s been a couple of years since I last redeemed a huge chunk of Petro-Points and our balance has grown again. So when a reader recently asked for an updated review of the best reward choices to maximize the value of the points, it encouraged me to go review the Petro-Points rewards and figure out the best way to redeem our points for the most value.

These rewards do change from time to time so you should do a quick check yourself before making a decision. For example, they used to offer redemptions for Digital Media including music, movies, TV shows, eBooks and Audiobooks but that will be discontinued on April 1, 2016. The information in this article was collected on March 8 2016.

UPDATE January 9 2017: There is no longer a Best Buy e-Gift Card offered. There is now a HBC e-Gift Card offered.

There’s also a new rewards for the Student Price Card.

Want a quicker summary? Scroll down looking for a table of the value in $ of 1000 points for the various choices you can make.

The Extremely Popular Fuel Savings Rewards Card Choice for Petro-Points Collectors

One of the most popular uses for Petro-Points is to buy a Fuel Savings Reward Card and reload it from time to time to save money off each litre of gas pumped.

But the Fuel Savings Rewards Card isn’t the only choice. You can use points to buy

a “Fuel Savings Rewards Card” to decrease the price paid per litre by 5 cents or a different one that drops the price paid per litre by 10 cents a litre, or
a “Petro-Canada Gift Card” which is basically cash you can apply against your purchase regardless of how many litres you buy

Obviously you can only use these cards at a Petro-Canada station not at a competitor’s.

Why Buy the Fuel Savings Rewards Card Instead of a Petro-Canada Gift Card?

It seems a bit stupid to only get $0.10 off a litre if you could just get a gift card and pay for your entire purchase to immediately get the value from your points.

The reason is that you get more $$$ for your points if you redeem them for the “cents per litre” cards. That’s because Petro-Canada wants you to keep coming back to the station. They’re hoping if you do, you might also get the car washed or buy a Mars bar for your child.

So Petro-Canada gives you a more $$ per point if you redeem your points for a Fuel Savings Rewards Card than if you redeem them for a gift card. They even have “specials” fairly often where you can get the Rewards card for fewer points, increasing the $$ value of your points even more. Keep an eye out for big cardboard signs near the gas pumps for those kinds of specials.

On March 8, 2016 the offers on the Petro-Points website were:

Card	Number of Points	Saving	Value	Dollars of value per 1000 points
Fuel Savings Reward	12 000 to buy a card in store, 11 000 to reload a card online	5 cents per litre for 200 L	$10	$0.83 and for $0.91 reload
Fuel Savings Reward 10 cents	22 000	10 cents per litre for 200L	$20	$0.91 for reload
Petro-Canada Gift Card	45 000	$25	$25	$0.056

You can see that today the Fuel Savings Reward cards offer the best value per point. Those values are often even higher due to various promotions.

The Also Very Popular Superworks Car Wash Points Purchase

Lots of drivers save their Petro-Points for car washes. It’s an easy way to pay to make the Lamborghini shine.

The website says, on March 8 2016, that a SuperWorks Car Wash costs 9 000 points. I don’t know the regular price for that car wash, so I can’t tell you the $ per point for that choice. Sorry!

What Else Can I Get That’s Not a Petro-Canada Product with Petro-Points?

You don’t just have to buy gas or get your car cleaned to use your Petro-Points. Here are some other offers.

The Newest Offer: Using Petro-Points to Get The Student Price Card

Obviously, this offer is only useful if you are a student. You can only use this card for discounts if you also have a Student ID card from one of the places listed on the SPC website.

For those who are the right kind of students, though, the offer is:

redeem 12 000 Petro-Points for a SPC card. The regular cost of the card is $10 (plus $2 for shipping). So the dollar value per 1000 points is $0.83 which is respectable but not epic.

The Best Way to Get Best Buy Savings Using Petro-Points

There were ~~are~~ two ways to change Petro-Points into savings at Best Buy and one of them was is a much better deal than the other.

UPDATE January 2017: Best Buy e-Gift cards are not offered any more.

~~The best buy for using your points at Best Buy is to buy Best Buy e-Gift Cards. (Yes, that is a deliberate tongue-twister!)~~

The e-Gift cards for Best Buy can be used at the online Best Buy website or at the store near you. You can only get this type of e-Gift card online. You can’t drive up to your local Petro-Can station to buy one. The “card” is just an email that they send to you and you print it off to take to the store (or just copy the information to use it online.) There is no real plastic or paper “card.” (That, by the way, makes it a bit less desirable to many people if they plan to give the e-Card to someone else as a gift.)

~~They sell the Best Buy e-Gift cards in sizes of $10, 25, 50, 100, 250, and 500.~~

Each Best Buy e-Gift card has the same value of $0.67 per 1000 Petro-Points. So buying these e-Gift cards gets you less than $1 in value for every 1000 Petro-Points. It’s also less value than a reload of your Petro-Canada Fuel Savings Rewards Card.

Your worse choice for Best Buy would be to get a regular plastic Best Buy gift card by redeeming your points at the gas station. That way, the value of the the card per 1000 points is only $0.50.

What Gives You The Most Dollar Value Per 1000 Petro-Points? CAA Membership and CAA Dollars

To get a CAA Basic Membership in Ontario, you can redeem 60 000 Petro-Points. In southern Ontario, a basic CAA membership costs $70. The dollar value per 1000 points is therefore 1.17. That’s the highest value offered on the site at the time this was written in March 2016. (There may be times when the Fuels Savings Rewards card comes with a special offer making it tie with this.)

You can also exchange 1 000 Petro Points for one CAA dollar. That means the dollar value per 1000 points is 1 dollar. That’s the second highest value offered on the site at the time this was written in March 2016.

If you register your CAA membership number online on the Petro-Canada Petro-Points site, you will also earn 20% more points on every purchase you make at Petro-Canada if you swipe your Petro-Points card or use a Petro-Points linked credit card. That’s actually a pretty hefty increase in points.

Another Way to Make 1000 Petro-Points Equal One Dollar

Itravel2000.com Rewards

You can redeem your Petro-Points for a discount on your itravel2000.com purchase.

10 000 points pays for $10 to be spent at iTravel2000.com. That’s a dollar value per 1000 points of $1.00.

That’s the same cost as the CAA dollars offer. HOWEVER: Read all of the terms and conditions and ask any questions before redeeming your points. The conditions are not simple and they might not work for you. The CAA dollars can be spent on a lot more things, more easily.

The Less Good Ways to Redeem Your Petro-Points

Gift Cards

On March 8, 2016 when I checked the Petro-Points website, all of the gift cards were being sold at a dollar value per 1000 points of $0.50. That’s a very low value. You should try to get more $$ for your points than that.

These gift cards are bought using your points at a Petro-Canada gas station, so not all cards may be available.

For 20 000 points you can get a $10 card for

League of Legends

For 30 000 points you can get a $15 card for

iTunes
Google Play
Xbox
Starbucks

For 40 000 points you can get a $18 card for

Sony

For 40 000 points you can get a $20 card for

Sony (hey that’s what the website says: but I’m willing to bet you can only get the $18 card anymore and they are sold out of the $20 ones….)

For 50 000 points you can get a $25 card for

iTunes
Cineplex
Chapters Indigo
Best Buy
Cinemas Guzzo
EB Games
Google Play
League of Legends
XBox
Home Depot
Hudson’s Bay
Sears
La Senza
Toys R Us
Shoppers Drug Mart
Gap
Homesense
Old Navy
Pharmaprix
Winners
the Keg Steakhouse & Bar
Cara Foods
Sir Corp. Restaurants
Earl’s
Pizza Pizza
Brewsters
St. Hubert
Pizza Hotline
Smitty’s
Starbucks
Cabela’s
SportChek

For 100 000 points you can get a $50 gift card for

iTunes
Cineplex
Chapters Indigo
Best Buy
Cinemas Guzzo
Sony
EB Games
Google Play
League of Legends
XBox
Home Depot
Hudson’s Bay
Sears
La Senza
Shoppers Drug Mart
Gap
Homesense
Old Navy
Pharmaprix
Winners
the Keg Steakhouse & Bar
Cara Foods
Sir Corp. Restaurants
Earl’s
Brewsters
St. Hubert
Starbucks
Cabela’s
Golf Town
SportChek

For 200 000 points you can get a $100 gift card for

Best Buy
Home Depot
Sears
the Keg Steakhouse & Bar
Earl’s
Cabela’s

How Can I Use My Petro-Points for Rewards to Maximize Their Dollar Value?

Here’s the handy summary table of rewards, as at March 8 2016 for redeeming Petro-Points. Your mileage may vary. (That’s a little “Retail” joke for you non-oil-patchers.)

Reward	$ value per 1000 points, in $
CAA Basic Membership, Ontario only	1.17
CAA Dollars, Ontario and BC and check about other provinces by calling your CAA	1.00
itravel2000.com Dollars (read terms and details carefully!)	1.00
Fuel Savings Reward Card redeemed online (may be better if there’s a deal on offer)	0.91
Fuel Savings Reward 10 Cent Card redeemed online (may be better if there’s a deal on offer)	0.91
Fuel Savings Reward Card at the station (may be better if there’s a deal on offer)	0.83
SPC Card (only available to the right kind of students)	0.83
Best Buy eGift Cards	0.67
Single SuperWorks Car Wash Pass (Costs 9000 points)	???
Petro-Canada Gift Card	0.56
Gift Cards for Stores, Services and Restaurants	0.50

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Join In
Do you buy gas at Petro-Canada and collect Petro-Points? Or are you still furious with Trudeau, er, Pierre Elliott Trudeau? Have you redeemed any Petro-Points and if so, for what? Please share your views with a comment.

I’ve worked with many computer programs over the years and I’ve found errors and bad coding in most of them. I also have a nasty suspicious mind that spots errors in the pricing on meat packages versus the huge posted sign rate and mysterious mistakes appearing in my bank accounts like the one for the safety deposit box I relinquished 4 years previously. All of these mistakes can be fixed if pointed out politely and quickly. So I keep track of each payment of interest, dividends, distributions and return of capital made to my brokerage accounts.

UPDATE: This article is historical, from 2016. I no longer invest with RBC Direct Investing.

What I’ve Found Recently While Watching the Transaction and Activity History for My Brokerage Accounts

Here are three examples of things I’ve discovered by keeping an eye on deposits to my brokerage accounts.

A: New Flyer Industries, NFI, Did Not Pay a Dividend in February 2016 but Why?

Tracking the dividend payments alerted me to a change at New Flyer Industries. Although in all of 2015 and in January of 2016 it paid a tidy monthly dividend, in February 2016 nothing popped into my account.

Did NFI Cancel or Suspend Its 2016 Dividends or Cut Them?

I checked in with BMO InvestorLine via their secure email app. The reply was that NFI had not paid BMO any money to be distributed in trust as dividends nor had BMO received any notification of a pending dividend payment for February.
So I went to the investor Relations section at New Flyer Industries’ website.

New Flyer Industries Switches to Quarterly Dividend for 2016

I scanned the NFI News Releases but only found a reference to the December declaration of the dividend payable in January 2016.

I had to actually open a presentation to investors made in January 2016 to find what I was looking for and it was good news.

NFI is just changing to a quarterly payment schedule from its old method of making a distribution monthly.

Good News! NFI Plans to Increase Its Dividend in 2016

The news was actually better than I’d hoped: New Flyer also plans to increase its dividend by 12.9% starting in April 2016! That will raise the total annual dividend from $0.62CAD to $0.70.

This news will be officially announced in March 2016 by the Board of Directors if all goes to plan.

The record date will likely be March 31, 2016 with the dividend payable on April 15 2016.

The January 2016 payment was the last monthly payment.

So all good news there.

B: Keg Royalties Income Fund Trust Units Paid a Bonus Distribution in January 2016

I was pleasantly surprised to find I had too much money in my account after the Keg, KEG.UN, paid its distributions for January 28 2016. A closer look revealed they had paid the usual monthly distribution plus a second one which was almost as large.
I checked on the internet and discovered that a special distribution was declared on December 15 2015.

Free money. Cool!

C: Bank of Nova Scotia Declares Two Dividend Increases in One Year

I usually know a dividend increase is on its way because I keep an eye on the RedFlagDeals Investing discussion forum where members share news about dividend increases for Canadian companies. However, a few times I’ve been caught off guard when a company decides to increase its dividend twice in one year.

In 2015 BNS did just that. They raised the dividend in April and again in October. While dividend increases are easy to accept, dividend decreases are not. Keeping an eye on my transaction history helps me make sure I’m using the right projected income numbers for our budget. That’s not important right now when I’m just planning for retirement but it will be very important when we actually retire.