Good Food, Bantal, and Credit Cards

Image by xiaming via Flickr

A good crony of mine had her birthday yesterday, so we, all her cronies, decided to gather for a birthday supper. (Reminds me that I haven’t got her any present, oh well…).

What was the name of the restaurant? Imperial Something in Senayan City. One day too early, otherwise we will be able to catch HSBC 50% discount for all food* promo (starts today and lasts until June). The “*” means T&C applies, as always.

It was after office hours, so time to relax – talking and sharing stories are the way of relaxation. So you guess, a lot of talking. Any subjects. Getting rich, handling mood swings, dealing with “unique” clients, losing (and gaining) weight, getting drunk. Surprisingly, the “getting kissed” was not brought up. (I guess we’re all bored with that).

Hot topic was about this fine young lady who surprisingly got “keseleo lehernya” and “salah bantal” or “salah tidur” quite frequently – it’s actually a double-edged sword: tidur dengan posisi bantal yang salah atau tidur di bantal yang salah…

The hot food was: sup ayam obat (surprisingly good, believe me, didn’t taste like “obat”), buncis with minced beef, udang mayonaise, tumis tahu ala chef (good!), and roast duck. Oh ya, and seafood roll (can’t finished it, took it away for late night snacks).

As a dessert, we got some kind of pastry with lotus seed paste inside. Plus the usual mango pudding. Nice and sweet. Plus the extraordinary treat of credit card customer service hell and a pleasant surprise of reflexology voucher.

Customer service hell? Well, her HSBC credit card was declined by the EDC machine. The card looks good, not expired, credit limit still good as well. After few investigation (and being held on the line by the call center), it turned out that they conveniently sent out a new credit card and blocked her current credit card. And coincidently this dear friend haven’t been informed at all about it and haven’t received the new card.

It was a good haggle with the CS lady. Poor lady. I’ll know more of it today, how this episode will end.

I, myself, had a certain delivery problem with HSBC. My credit card was approved in January, and they failed to send it until today. Five months. Well, to tell you frankly, part of that is my problem. The delivery address is my apartment which is always empty in daytime. But I am actually expecting an intelligent yet simple solution, like, calling me before sending out the card, instead of doing the same MO repeatedly. It’s the SOP thing, I agree, and for security reason. But too bad, waste of money, waste of time.

Credit card delivery is always outsourced to third party. Outsourcing is OK, but this should be managed more carefully by the issuer. This wasn’t the first time.

Anyway, the sad customer service episode that night was swept away by a very nice waiter: he gave us two additional 60-minute reflexology voucher. (Of course after one of us asked for it, but still, that’s nice).

Good night guys!