Patricia Chan

The drama with @virginaustralia velocity points retro claim continues.. unfortunately..

Patricia Chan — Thu, 02 May 2013 01:20:52 +0000

Sorry readers that I’ve been ranting about these issues for the past few posts. I need a place to vent and document my experience. Where else except my own blog? I wrote a long blog about why I think buying a code-share Virgin Australia/Singapore Airlines flight is not a good idea, followed by my issue with Virgin Retro claims processing for those flights. Unfortunately, the drama still continues . Today, 2 weeks after 18 April, I saw the following flight credited to my Velocity Accounts, which I have never taken: Why my SYD-SIN, SIN-SYD, SYD-CBR flights are not yet credited? The customer service said this: “Your retro claims were only just processed MANUALLY yesterday and it will take up to 14 days to appear on your account.” This is exactly what they said on 18 April. When I told him that, he said it’s probably due to some sort of technical error. Allegedly, they found the claim I submitted on 11 April (even though the staff on 18 April said there was no evidence of previous claims). There’s nothing I can do but wait for another 14 days. I wonder after these 14 days wait, if it’s not been solved, is there anything else I can do? Is there a higher power I can write to? Maybe I should write to Sir Richard Branson, like this dude did. Why is there a SYD-BNE flight credited to my account? The customer service said this: “The SYD-BNE flight has the same passenger name as you. That’s why you received those points. Are you sure you didn’t take the flights?” Ummm…NO!! This answer actually was making me really nervous about transferring points from my banks to Velocity. It might arrive in someone else’s account. Unfortunately, I have also just won a major prize from a marketing competition from my bank and am expecting a large number of points to be credited to my velocity account. So I am pretty nervous about the whole process. Let’s hope there is no drama in this. Otherwise I will go mental and will probably run a campaign to encourage people to boycott VA – hope not, I kinda like them. I still like Virgin Australia (when your other choice is Qantas, you have no option) and kinda addicted to Velocity Points. However I am starting to think they are probably down to the same level now. Why can’t they be efficient like Singapore Airlines???? Is there anyway to transfer out Velocity Points to another program, like Starwood perhaps?

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Problems with @virginaustralia retro claim processing

Patricia Chan — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 02:37:34 +0000

A follow up on the blog post I made about my drama for booking and flying on VA/SQ codeshare flights to South East Asia early this month. On 9 April 2013, I made a retro claim by phone for my VA coded flights CBR-SYD, SYD-SIN. On 11 April 2013, I made a retro claim by email (with etickets attached) for all my VA coded flights CBR-SYD, SYD-SIN, SIN-SYD, SYD-CBR. I received an email confirmation that I should see the points within 7 days for VA operated flights. Today, I rang Velocity Call Centre because the points were not there. Hey guess what, she said she can not find any previous requests that I have made. So she’s put in a new manual requests. I should see the points in 7-14 days. I was planning to transfer 60K points from my credit card points to Velocity – hoping to boost my points so I can redeem a long-haul return flights to US for my 3 weeks trip in May. A bit disappointed and nervous now.. might let the points stay in my bank for a bit longer and just book some special deals from Cathay or Singapore Airlines.

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Reasons why I would never book @virginaustralia and @singaporeair codeshare flight ever again..

Patricia Chan — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 06:16:21 +0000

Warning, long blog post… (I don’t check my grammar and spelling either) Let me preface this blog post by saying as at the moment Virgin Australia is still my favourite domestic airline in Australia. I thought they have come a long way from being a budget airline to a good competitor to Qantas. I found their in-flight service excellent, the planes are newer and the aircrews are more polite than Qantas. However, my recent flights to Asia on VA/SQ codeshare flights seriously caused me to want to scream and tear my hair out of my head several times. I was happy when Virgin Australia struck a deal and become Singapore Airlines’ (SQ) partner. Singapore Airlines is indisputably my favourite airline of all time. All my travels with them have been excellent, from booking to check-in to in-flight experience (meal, entertainment, customer service), both for business class and economy class. I was truly hoping that this partnership will combine the best of the two.. beside I am kinda addicted to Velocity Points. Krisflyer (SQ’s loyalty program) point has 3 years expiry date and unfortunately, despite SQ’s excellent service, sometimes I have no choice on which airline I travel with, internationally. I also can not use Krisflyer point in Australia. I have lost so many Krisflyer points in the past. If you just wish for a hassle-free travel, check-in at airport, no change to your flight, collect your luggage when they told you to, no special request, etc, it is FINE to book VA/SQ codeshare flight. HOWEVER, for a more discerning traveller, you lost so many flexibility, it is not funny. You can not add your velocity number to your booking You can not manage your booking online You can not check-in online and pre-select your seats VA counter in Canberra, can not check you in for your international leg Your luggage can NOT go through all the way to your destination city You can not change flights without calling Australian call centre You can not get into earlier flights if available unless you clear it with Virgin Australia first (which mean you have to call Australian call centre) You can not upgrade VA/SQ flights using velocity points Let me elaborate. I recently made a booking through Zuji for: CBR-SYD-SIN-PLM, SIN-SYD-CBR. I booked through Zuji, NOT direct on Virgin Australia site to avoid credit card payment (I think about $15 per pax for international flights). Zuji also has lower currency conversion rate so the fare worked out a bit cheaper than buying direct on VA site. 1. You can not add your velocity number to your booking. This is possibly because I booked through an agent. However, I rang Velocity Membership contact centre and requested them to link my booking and my velocity number, this wasn’t done. They requested me to ring again 3 days after the flight is completed to do a retro-claim. OK, no biggie, just a tad painful.. and ridiculous. I just rang Velocity Membership Contact Centre and did...

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Talking about games, gamification and what I am working on at the moment

Patricia Chan — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 01:08:07 +0000

Of late, I have been working more and more in the gamification area with QuestaGame. I am finding it getting more and more important in human-computer-interaction, eLearning and marketing. Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context in order to engage users and solve problems (source: wikipedia). I have always been a gamer, whether it’s traditional game you play as a kid on the field, or video games. I remember when I was younger, I would gamify almost everything to make it fun. Boring Math subject? Let’s have a little competition. Exam coming? Let’s turn this study group into a quiz with prizes. Split us into a few groups and challenge each other. I must admit that the desire to win (to kick your friend’s a$$), the challenge to have higher scores, to get the prize, always motivate me more than just stuck my nose in a book and memorise the hell out of everything. My brothers and I used to make our own board game as well. We’d draw patterns, steps, challenges, bonuses, etc on a piece of paper. Then we build character from a malleable wax. Use dices and then start our own adventure board game. Sorry about the crappy picture, but just to illustrate what I meant with creating our own game. Our board games were so much better than that (even when drawn by kids). I was one of those kids who was not studious, but always did well at school. What I realised much later in life was, because I gamified my whole schooling, it was fun. I didn’t mind doing it, and I did it often (repetition). Also, your brain works by recognising patterns and events. By synchronising a complex subject with an activity, it stuck more. Some of my better (and well liked) teachers and tutors use visual examples, games, symbolism, scoring, etc to simulate our learning behaviour – all are elements of gamification. I love video games too. RPG, Strategy, Simulation and Puzzle are my favourite genre. Even though my parents tried to discourage us to spend less time on video games, I found video games actually taught me a lot. It taught me business concepts in simplified matter. Lemonade Tycoon taught me that customer service, good supplies, good recipes for yummy lemonade will help me sell more and earn more money. Anticipate external factor – if the weather is cold, make your lemonade warm, if it’s a hot day make them very cold. Capitalise on opportunities, if there’s an event in town, make sure you have more supplies as you’ll sold out and miss out on revenue. Reinvest your profits to expand your business, research new recipes, hire better staff, and many many more tips. In war strategy games, I also learnt to be tactical and strategic. You wouldn’t believe how relevant ’raise funding to feed an army of 5 x 10,000 footmen and calvaries and archers to besiege a city for three months’ in...

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Advanced Javascript Libraries are blurring the lines between front-end and back-end programming, is it a good thing?

Patricia Chan — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 05:07:16 +0000

As someone who’s working constantly around UX and Human-Computer Interaction, I am always looking at technologies that will help me build interactive items (games, presentation, web ux) more efficiently. Of late, I noticed the emergence of advanced Javascript Libraries that promise to do both front-end and back-end processing on the client side. Sidelined a bit.. while looking at one particular library, I stumbled across this image. Yoda is actually quite dear to me. Not because I like Star Wars (sorry Star Wars fans!!), but because my husband actually told me I talk like one. I had this interesting conversation with my workmate before;- Me: (out of the blue) “Hey my hubby (bf then) said I talk like Yoda.” Workmate: “Ohh.. is it because you’re wise and think about things before you say it.” (He was a junior developer working in my team) Me: “No, that’s because I speak backwards.” Workmate: “…” (at this point, I assume my credibility as his team leader was destroyed beyond recovery). OK, I probably just destroyed my own credibility and this blog’s before I even made the point of this post. These javascript libraries I am looking at, very promising they are, I come across quite a bit (attempting yoda-speak): ExtJS by Sencha I am finding more and more companies using ExtJS to code the front-end of their web-apps. Particularly true for big, enterprised-scale app. To be honest, I am not a big fan since it has very steep learning curve. Think of it as microsoft word for javascript world. It is very powerful and contain lots of items you don’t need. The saving grace is, it has pre-built widgets, UI elements and examples that you can reverse engineer easily. If you’re aiming to work for a big company or build really big application, it’s a good thing to have sencha extjs under your belt. JQuery JQuery is still the default Javascript library that I use whenever I code an interactive interface. This script is everywhere. Most of my clients have JQuery function embedded somewhere in their code. The majority of slideshow, gallery, and interactive forms plugins for open-source CMS (drupal, wordpress, etc) are built using it. RaphaelJS RaphaelJS is good to use if you need to spit out gracefully an image or vector image – very handy for dynamic charting and animation. Probably is better than JQuery but JQuery has higher market penetration. So if you are looking for a developer, it’s easier to find someone who knows how to use JQuery than Raphael. Below are examples of Advanced JS Libraries that look quite promising as replacements for server side-processing scripts. Google them to see what they are and who uses them. All I have done with them is reverse engineer existing program, so I can’t comment much. AngularJS ImpressJS NodeJS SocketIO I don’t normally like to talk about the coding side of my work. But we know that lately a lot of web startups (and existing companies) want to produce apps that are portable across...

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