Most of the petrol company in Malaysia are having reward program or redemption program as an appreciation shown to their customer. However there are some differences among these 3 petrol companies’ loyalty program if you learn in details.

Let me brief you what is the difference for these 3 Malaysia petrol company reward program.

bonus link reward program

Smiles reward program

Mesra reward program

3 Famous Malaysia Petrol Companies’ Loyalty Program

I am comparing these 3 famous Malaysia petrol companies, namely Petronas, Shell and Petron (formerly known as Esso). Their respective loyalty reward programs are Mesra, Bonus Link and Smiles. These loyalty programs are widely known to Malaysia citizen.

Reward Point Given by Individual Petrol Company

• Every Petronas point is equal to every “Little” of petrol purchase.
• Every Bonus Link point is equal to every “Little” of petrol purchase. The Bonus Link point is similar to the point as Patronas.
• Petron point is slightly difference than previous 2 patrol companies. Every Patron point is equal to every “Ringgit” spend in purchase petrol.

By the way, those loyalty points are given not only on petrol purchase but also cover for diesel purchase as well. Once we accumulate to certain level of reward points, let say we have Petron reward points, we could go through Smiles redemption catalog to choose the reward we could get.

Compare These 3 Patrol Companies’ Reward Program

I know sometime it is very hard to compare these 3 loyalty programs, instead of comparing the redemption merchandize items, we could bench mark with the patrol rebate. For instance, for every 3000 Bonus Link points, we could have equal of RM30 of patrol rebate. Let us see the summary I am putting up:

• Petronas(Mesra). Every 3000 points, we could get equal to RM30 of patrol rebate.
• Shell(Bonus Link).   Similar to Patronas, every 3000 points, we could get equal to RM30 of patrol rebate.
• Petron(Smiles). For every 3000 points, we could get equal to RM45 of patrol rebate!

From above, we could easily see that the rebate for Patron loyalty program is actually much preferable then the other 2 patrol companies.

Exact Patrol Rebate for these 3 Patrol Companies

Base on today (12-Oct-2014) price list, the patrol selling price is set as RM2.30 per little for RON95. This price is same across 3 petrol companies. With simple calculation, we can get rebate rate (%) as below:

• Petronas- Mesra: 0.43%
• Shell- Bonus Link: 0.43%
• Petron- Smiles: 1.5%

From above rebate rate, we can identify Petron is given 1% more rebate compare to Shell & Patronas. The rebate gap is even higher if we are consuming RON97 which comes with higher selling price.

How Long We Need to accumulate 3000 points?

Now we need to see how frequent we could claim the patrol rebate from these 3 patrol companies? Since the petrol rebate could only be materialize once we are able to accumulate 3000 points. Now we need to find out how long before we could accumulate 3000 points?

I know everybody has our own driving habit and travel frequent. Take my data as an example, I am consuming about RM300 every months for my family transport needs. In order to accumulate 3000 points, it takes me difference time period to reach the accumulate status.

• With monthly RM300 spend in petrol, it takes me about 23 months before I could accumulate the 3000 points.
• Same as Patronas loyalty program, I have to accumulate the points for 23 months before it reach 3000 points.
• I have to spend 10 months time to accumulate my points from Patron loyalty program.

Compare these Malaysia 3 patrol companies’ loyalty programs, in order for me to reach my 3000 points qualify for petrol rebate; it takes me 10 months if I consistently engage with Patron Company. It may take me 2 years if I stick to Patronas and Shell’s reward program!

With above study, I believe everybody could agree with me that Petron is offering better petrol rebate as compare to Petronas and Shell. Theoretically Patron is giving us 1.5% rebate for every single dollar we spend in petrol, however the rebate could only be materialized after 10 months we continuously shown our loyalty to this petrol company.

I hope my explanation and the table shown is given you a clearly pictures on Malaysia Petrol Company’s loyalty reward program. You are the consumer, now is your time to make your wise judgement.