I've been a member of mypoints.com for a long time. Now that I'm looking to find ways to save my way to Disney World, saving mypoints is a good option. I get points when I do bzzagent reports or surveys, click on links in emails, or shop online. (The shopping I'm much less likely to do, however.)
I also have an amazon.com rewards Visa. Each purchase I make builds up points which can be used for a variety of things, again including gift cards I can save for the Disney trip.
Here is the dilemma. I feel like using gift cards to purchase gas for the drive would save us a ton on the drive. HOWEVER, the choices are limited, and Both sites offer gasoline gift cards....to BP. I have been avoiding BP at all costs because of the horrible things they have done to our oceans...so now it is a real ethical dilemma. Save money on gas, but purchase it at BP? Or perhaps get a Shell card and spend far more on gas, using up the cards faster, but have a cleaner conscience. What would you do?
Interesting...doesn't one of the rewards include a Visa gift card? You know, the one that's just a cash value..then you could use that for any brand of gas! I know our Visa rewards card offers that.
ReplyDeleteThe Visa rewards card actually costs more points than the other cards. Not sure why?
ReplyDeleteWe ran into this when we drove down to Florida last month, lol. There was a very memorable moment when we were caravaning with my parents, and we both exited for gas; we were following my parents. There were 2 gas stations, a BP and a... something else. We saw the BP price, drove past feeling all "aw yeah we ain't gonna buy from you, BP!", hit the Other Gas Station, saw it was five cents more per gallon than the BP, and immediately turned around and drove back to the BP. My parents did the exact same thing. Hard to be ethical when you're broke, heh.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I read this whole interesting thing one of my LJ friends posted from her dad, who is some super duper smart scientist who works in the oil industry or something, and he was telling her about how BP is more into the manufacturing of oil than the selling anymore, and that most or all of the BP gas stations aren't actually owned by BP anymore, they were bought out by individuals but have to keep the BP name for a certain number of years, so by not buying from them you're actually hurting individual businesses but not really affecting BP all that much. I don't know how true that is, but I used it to comfort myself anyway.
Most of the oil companies are dirty anyway, soooo.....do what works best for you!
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