Please note figures were correct at the time of writing. Fuel prices are volatile, and all this was before Covid.
I’ve never used a fuel card, and for a good reason. I’ve been approached many times over the years (damned Yellow Pages) by companies offering me one, but the simple fact is that I have never been convinced that any savings are great enough, real enough, or reliable enough. Not for me, at any rate.
You see, when you look at what fuel card providers say, it’s always something like “save an average of 3p per litre against the national average forecourt price”. It’s that bit in bold which is the fly in the ointment. Fuel in Nottingham is – as long as you stay away from city centre garages – well below the national average in terms of cost per litre. At the time of writing, a litre of diesel costs me 125p, and yet the national average is apparently 132p. I would only ever “save” money if I sought out one of the joker garages around this way who charge this much, which would be stupid if I can already buy it at full price elsewhere for 7p less.
But what if there was a way to get a discount even on the lowest fuel prices? Well, there is – and it works all the time, no matter what the advertised price on the forecourt is, and it works anywhere.
I shop regularly in Asda, and my average weekly spend on groceries there is around £150. I also buy my fuel from Asda (it is the same quality as the equivalent basic grade from anywhere else), and my average spend on that is also around £150. A total of £300.
A few years ago, I came across Asda’s Cashback Credit Card Plus. It offered 2% cashback on virtually all purchases from Asda – crucially, including fuel. And although I had once vowed never to have another credit card as long as I lived, I was now in a position to be able to pay off an entire credit card bill each month without blinking, and since it would actually save me money I decided to try it. It works like this.
My weekly fuel spend attracts a cashback figure of £3. The quantity of fuel involved is about 120 litres at 125p per litre, so that equates to a discount of 2.5p per litre. But since I also spend the same amount on groceries, I get another £3 cashback with that, which means another 2.5p discount if I apply it to my fuel (whichever way you look at it, it’s money in my pocket). It equates to a saving of about £300 a year.
Cashback is redeemed by way of a voucher. Each time you use your card, cashback is added to your account, and when you’re ready you just choose an amount from your cashback balance and print off a voucher. You can’t use the voucher to pay for fuel directly, but since I already shop in Asda I just use it there. Obviously, you have to factor it in appropriately when you complete your tax return, but that doesn’t stop it being a saving on fuel costs.
Although the 2% cashback is only on Asda purchases, you also get 0.2% cashback on all other purchases made using your card. I know that 0.2% might not seem much, but buying a TV or something similarly expensive attracts up to another £5, and another 5p per litre discount for a week. As long as you clear your account each month, there’s no interest. Basically, the more you use your credit card for, the more cashback you get.
Unfortunately, the Cashback Plus card is not currently available to new applicants (since June 2019), but there is still the basic Asda credit card, which gives 1% cashback (and 0.2% on non-Asda purchases). This is still better than most cashback (and fuel card) deals out there right now if you are in an area which has below average fuel prices.
Addendum: My cashback card reverted to the issuer (Creation) a while after I’d written this. I expected to lose the entitlement completely, or at least for it to be cut back. But I now get the whole 2% on every purchase I make from anywhere, so you can imagine how I use the card for anything I can. And it is effectively a cash payment, since it is taken off my balance each month.