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 :)

Memorable First Times

I might have mentioned that I grew up in a big city. I was also very fortunate to be born to be into an okay family. My parents were not rich, but I didn't have to wait until I grow up to let say, go to shopping malls, or flying on an airplane. However, of course not everyone is as lucky, and I had some friends who did those for the first time when they were adults. The results were kinda funny :p

Let's name this first friend as Hiro. He grew up in a small village in India, not sure what the village name though. Anyway, he said that all his life he lived in that village, never been to the city. He then said, the first time he ever took an escalator was when he was 18. One day he visited his uncle in the city for the first time (seriously, I don't know how big this city is, Bogor is a city, Solo is a city and Sydney is also a city, but I dunno the size. Well, he said it to me as a city). Then, he went to a shopping mall, and he stopped in front of the automatic door, stunned seeing it open and close by itself hahahaha.. :p I know it's normal since it was his first time, but imagining him as an 18 years old stunned in front of the doors is really funny.

Then, he went into the mall, and he found this other weird object. Can you guess? Escalator! He stopped, looked at it up and down, down and up, confused. He said to me, he stopped and thought for a while, when is the right time for me to step into it???? LOL again, keep in mind this was an 18 years old boy :P

Another memorable first timer is the water tap, one of my colleagues. His flight to Sydney was his first time on an airplane. And he flew ALONE. Then, there was this guy named John Smith coming up to him after he got into the plane. Mr Smith asked him if he mind swapping seat with him as he wanted to sit next to his companion. Water tap being a nice guy said ok. Then he swapped seat and swapped his boarding pass too. He thought just like in a cinema, if you swap seat, then you need to swap the ticket too. Then the plane flew to Denpasar, Bali.

In Denpasar, Water Tap needed to get off the plane and transfer into flight going to Sydney. That's when the problem occurred.. he needed to produce his PREVIOUS boarding pass in order to get his connecting flight boarding pass!! Mr John Smith got off in Denpasar, so Water Tap couldn't swap the boarding pass. To make it worse, Water tap was a country boy who didn't speak much English! It was very hard for him to explain the whole situation. the officers kept asking him why did he need to swap the boarding pass just to swap seats? he told them he thought it was like in the cinema! I bet those officers were like what the.... Water Tap was very stressed. He was alone with little English. And he didn't have the phone number of his friend who will pick him up at Sydney Airport. There's no way for him to contact his friend. 

Luckily he had all his university documents with him. He gave all those documents to the officers and told them to check with his university to prove him legal. Now that I think about it, the airline should be able to get his information from the database, showing his passport should be enough. But this happened 12 years ago, so maybe it was like that back then.

The officers then called the university to check Water Tap identity. Luckily the phone call was picked up and Water Tap identity could be confirmed and he could get on to that flight. Until now he's still pissed off with Bali and what he refers to "YOUR people" LOL

Another small funny story is one of my cousin's, Ija. It wasn't her first time flying, but it was her first time flying with non-budget airlines. You know we all get earphones to use for watching movies on the plane right? She never had that with budget airlines. So when she flew the first time with Qantas, she was confused of where she should plug them in. Then she SKSD-ly asked the middle age guy sitting next to her.

Ija:  "First time flying with Qantas, Sir?"

Mister: "oh, no... I've been few times."

Ika: "oh! *excitedly* where do I plug these into???".

Lol