Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Nominations War

Seems like I've never mentioned the nomination program our office has in place.

As a motivation business, our company has some programs in place to motivate and recognize employees who do great job. It is great of course, being recognized by our peer of the good job we have done and even maybe made as the team member of the week.

So, this is how it works. Every week, employees can submit nominations for their colleagues/bosses who they think have done great job, have done the extra miles, have helped them during the week, being a great mentor, or even for little things such as bringing their baking stuffs in to share with their colleagues. Then during our weekly meeting, those nominations would be read out one by one, people clap, and then team of the week as well as team member of the week would be selected. Their photos would be on company intranet that week.

For each nomination made and nomination received, points would be given. Also, if you are the team member of the week, you receive extra points too. These points would be accumulated and the person who has the most points within the month, gets a CD... to select :) I said select, because it's not for that winner to take home. It's to add to the company's CD collection :) you can take it home for a day or two to copy it :) oh, but you can select ANY CD you want, if Superexcited likes your choice or that the CD is appropriate to be played in the office, I.e. no techno stuffs. It's good that Britney spears actually made into the list. I think... :)

Anywayyyyyy unfortunately eventhough being recognized is great and stuffs, everyone in my department is generally busy. Second, we are not the bullshit type of people who write long and funny nominations for people. And third, we can't play the CD in our area anyway, there's no CD player. Fourth, can you imagine making nominations every week? After a while it becomes so redundant. And back to the 2nd point, we just feel it's not worthy of a nomination anymore. As the results, my department hardly nominates.

Until 3 weeks ago when you know who made a comment to our manager about the fact that I've only made 3 nominations this year, and Little Missy only made 2 (and 1 of them was actually a nomination I made for another colleague but I put me, Little Missy and James Bond as the nominators!!). When our manager said that, Tap Water and me kinda got into heated argument as both of us feel that we are underappreciated by the other department.

The thing with these nominations, you can nominate a person, and you can also nominate a team. What tap water and I notice, the other department most of the time nominate IT in a team, I.e. the whole project team which includes IT and the other departments. However, they can nominate their department colleague individually too. But hardly with IT. After I realized that, I feel ripped off to nominate the other department that often. I do still nominate, but I think before I nominate.

Finally the manager said he didn't ask us to nominate other department. Just nominate within us. The other department nominates their colleagues right? So we can also nominate ourselves. It's a bit hard really, since even though we are in the same department, we usually deal with the other department more. So then, from then on we nominate our team mates every week.

So every Thursday, Little Missy and me remind everyone in our department to nominate and even giving suggestions on how to nominate for the others. As the results, last week for example, half or even more than half of the whole nominations were made by us lol. And now Little Missy is number 1 in the leader board, me number 2 and Barbie Girl on 3rd.

So funny really, I wonder what Superexcited thinks. Is he happy that his comment was noted? Does he realise that we do this just for fun and just to take revenge against the other department? I wonder...

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

GoMastercard Buyer Protection Cover Experience

Last week I finally took advantage of the Buyer Protection Insurance that comes with my GoMastercard Credit Card.

What Buyer Protection does are:
1. If the item you purchase goes on sale or reduced within 6 months after you purchase it, then you can claim the difference in price. Therefore, you don't need to wait until sale to buy things that you want.

2. If the item you purchase is rejected for a refund or stolen within 6 months (i think), you can make a claim.

3. If you become unemployed, then you don't need to pay the full amount of your balance. I can't remember exactly about this point, but something like this.

It costs some little percentage of my balance at the end of the month. I don't need to pay anything if I pay the balance in full before the end of the month too, so sometimes I don't even need to pay the premium.

Eventhough I've been on it for years, I've never claimed anything. This ofcourse due to my habit of only buying things when on special :P but then 2 weeks ago I FINALLY tried it myself :)

Remember those trips I made to IKEA buying furniture for my new home? Those side tables we bought had 20% off 2 weeks ago! Lucky I paid using my GoMastercard, so I could claim the difference. From memory, 5 of them cost $69 each and 1 was $59. Total of $404. 20% of that is $80.8. I could even buy another one for myself! (remember that all those were for my mum and sisters).

So I went to the website to claim. All I needed to do was fill in the form, filled in the date I bought it, how much was it, where did I get it, what brand and model, how much is it now, etc etc. It was pretty easy.

However I was confused when I filled it out since there was no quantity text box. We bought 3 x beige Askvol on our first trip to Ikea, then on the 2nd trip we bought 2x black Askvol and 1 Musken. So I submitted 3 claims, for 3 Askvol, 2 Askvol, and 1 Musken. Since there was no quantity box, I put the quantity in description box. I thought they would read it anyway.

Less than 2 days after, I got emails saying my claims have been approved! Was so happy with the speed and no hassle whatsoever. But when I checked the amount refunded, I frowned. I was only refunded the difference for 1 item in each claim eventhough I put quantity in the description.

I called the customer service whice by the way was very quick to pick up the phone! She was nice and friendly too. She listened and read my claims and said that it seems that the claim team was confused too and thought that the price I put in was the total price, not individual. Therefore only refunded for a single item. She then suggested to submit claims again individually this time for the rest of the items.

Then I submitted 3 claims again. 2 of them were refunded soon enough, but I didn't hear about the other one for almost a week! So I called the customer service number again. The girl who answered listened to me and took her time reading the claim. Apparently I made a mistake when answering a question asking if I've made a price protection claim on this item before. I put yes instead of no. I haven't been refunded for that item yet!

I explained that to her and she said she could fix it for me if I have time to hold on the line. She then did whatever she needed to do and fixed it there while I waited.

Then, done! All sorted out! Eventhough I had to give them a call, but on both occasions the girls were friendly, nice and helpful. And they do know what they are doing and how things supposed to be done. The claims were processed very quickly too.

1 think I noticed was, the 2nd girl I talked on the phone said at the end of the call, "Thank you for calling us to chase it up." It gave me the impression that she cares about the claims, and she sounded genuine too. Not like marketing-call-scripted type.

Overall I'm so pleased with my GoMastercard Buyer Protection experience :)