I was looking at the Petro-Canada updated program and their site seems like it’s got a lot going on. So I will simplify and identify some of the key highlights to watch for.

Earn Petro-Points

They decided to go straightforward and simpler with their earning structure:

• Earn 10 points per litre on any fuel purchase
• Earn 10 points for every $1 spent on car washes and in-store purchases

Earn 20% More

The only chance you can earn more points (20% more) is when you link your Petro-Points card with their following partners:

• BCAA
• CAA
• Hudson’s Bay
• SPC

Redeem Petro-Points

Fixed Rewards Redemption

You can redeem your points for a straight points to dollar ratio. Every 1,000 points is worth $1. That $1 can be use on fuel, car wash and in-store purchases.

That essentially means that you are earning a 1% cash back. Same goes for gift cards, 10,000 points equals $10 worth of gift cards.

Fuel Savings Cards

As a result, the Fuel Savings Cards will continue. If you redeem your points on the Fuel Savings card, where you save 5¢ per litre on 200 litres, which is essentially $10 total, you need to redeem 10,000 points.

Car Wash

A car wash ticket is going to cost 10,000 points, so long that you value a car wash as $10. Otherwise, you are better off redeeming on fuel.

However, if you redeem a car wash pass, you can potentially get more value.

• 185,000 points = 90-day SuperWorks Season Pass or 90-day GlideWash Season Pass

The rule is that you can only use the pass once a day. So 90 days would have costs 900,000 points (90 x 10,000) if you redeemed it one at a time. So 185,000 points is a much better return than the 1% that you would redeem for fuel.

Conclusion

What is currently missing is a co-branded credit card, after it discontinued its partnership with CIBC.

I always felt that the old Petro-Points reward program was all over the place. There is no question that it is much simpler going forward. However, because of the simplicity, the only sweet spot that I see at the moment is the car wash season passes.

For now, I remain neutral about it. I like how the program is much simpler now. But I wish there were more sweet spots. So hopefully they will offer bonus points earning promotions to help rack up the points quicker. I also suspect that we may see some promotional discounts of certain rewards later on. These offers will tell me whether this was a good overall change.

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