A Travel Goes ‘Wrong” - RHB Tavel Money Credit Card
Have you ever experiencing glitches in your traveling arrangement - flight delayed, inaccurate information, etc? Well, it turns out that you could also have the same stressful experience if you are dealing with RHB Travel Money Credit card - RHB latest credit card launched very recently. The benefit of TM credit card is simple yet attractive - use the card and get air mileage point to redeem air tickets and traveling packages. With the launching of this card, the earlier RHB Air Asia credit card is now discontinued.
However, after spending a good chunk of time talking to different people in the credit card call center, my understanding of the TM credit card is as blank as the promotion leaflet which I received last weekend in a shopping center. One thing for sure, as a new shareholder (I am a member of EPF), I urge RHB to strengthen its call center’s product knowledge especially when a new product is launched. The answers I received from the call center were either incomplete or inconsistent with the terms and conditions listed in its website. For example, the call center said the TM air mileage will be rewarded when the card is used with the participating merchants, while in its website, it stated that Air mileage points will be awarded to ALL participating and non-participating merchants. In its press release on April 6th, it said “We target to to have 400 merchants an partners to come on-board and we are also talking to our 5,000-plus merchants to join in as well.” Which is which, you go figure!
In addition, RHB also needs to insist a more consumer friendly services from its participating merchants. For example, its main participating merchant is Holiday Tour where the traveling redemption is done. If you like me call up the company, most likely you will get “we are sorry, we can’t attend to your call, if you know the extension, please key in now, or press zero to leave a message.” Question - how on earth you know the extension number? And how many ‘potential/interested’ customers will leave a message? I usually don’t.
In view of the above situation, a more detail review is only available when RHB is able to get its acts together. But for now, if you interested to became one of the 100,000 people that RHB is targeting this card to, please keep the following in mind:
- Point earning coverage. Does the points only awarded with participating merchants or is opens to all. And if the points only awarded with participating merchants, know ‘who’ are they and how many of them. This is to ensure you have sufficient ‘opportunities’ to earn points.
- Redemption value. know in advanced how many points you needed to exchange for a specific air ticket or travel package. Earlier analysis on co-branding credit card reveals that the true reward value for every single Ringgit charged is in the range of RM0.005 - RM0.05. With the standard 2 years period, you could then easily figure out how much you need to charge to your card to redeem your target travel package/air ticket, and could it be done?
Wishing you a smooth and enjoyable holiday