Like Father Like Son...

I said I could write volumes on MAS. This is another piece.

Although this time it is about Firefly, it is also about MAS. Isn’t Firefly part of MAS?

My colleague in Singapore who usually does the all the plane bookings for me was not sure when I would like to swing over to Kuala Lumpur for my weekends. Although she had reminded me, I had totally forgotten until Thursday night. I duly went on-line to make a booking; it was about 11pm. My credit card was repeatedly declined, even though it was accepted for the travel insurance part. I tried to contact Firefly via its call centre. “Sorry, we are closed. We operate from what time to what time.” That was the voice mail I got. I called Maybank’s card centre.

“There was nothing wrong with your card, sir. The problem is with Firefly’s clearing bank was not able to communicate with our bank.”

The officer was most sympathetic, but he just could not do anything. He suggested I tried again an hour or so later.

I tried an hour later, which was past mid-night, and again, I was not able to effect the payment.

On my iPad next morning, I saw Firefly’s reminder for me to pay up. Again, my attempt proved futile.

At 8am, I called its call centre. This time the centre was manned. The officer confirmed that their system had been down since yesterday. At least he could effect my purchase over the phone.

My question is: if they know the system has been out, why don’t they have a standby arrangement, like ensuring the call centre is reachable to explain and process sales?

How many sales have they lost because of this? How much ill-will they have created?

These people simply don’t have any business concept, do they?