Points of contention

> Sometimes, it doesn’t pay to be loyal customers, especially when the rewards are hardly worth the effort

RM20 for the loyalty card, he reckoned that he actually needed to spend RM4,000 at the store in order to get back his investment! Hardly seems worth all that bother.

Another flummoxed friend is a female customer of a supermarket chain.

She found out that her stack of gift vouchers amounting to RM1,500 issued by the chain couldn’t be honoured.

After having received them in February 2017, she tried to use them some months later, but was told that vouchers without expiry dates could not be used after March 2017!

Staff at the chain’s Petaling Jaya store told her that directive was printed on a banner posted at the entrance.

The impression given was “too bad that you didn’t see it”.

This friend is not alone as there are many social media posts pouring scorn over the ‘system’, with one person claiming that its Taman Maluri store didn’t even have a banner.

It must be borne in mind that not all gift voucher recipients are customers. Since the vouchers didn’t have an expiry date, the recipients assumed that it was safe to redeem at their convenience. Many also wondered why the store didn’t use its usual SMS notification service to announce its new gift voucher policy, although it frequently used the same medium to announce sales and promotions. Their contention is this: since the vouchers had been paid for, why isn’t the store honouring them? This is tantamount to losing consumers’ trust – and possibly their patronage. If the company had issued vouchers without expiry dates, then the responsibility lies with it to honour them. Recipients shouldn’t be penalised. While the store has the prerogative to amend terms and conditions, new rules should only apply for newly-issued vouchers with expiry dates. The store claimed to have given enough time for customers to use the vouchers with no expiry dates, placing announcements at its premises and on social media, with the latter example assuming that its customers are young and techsavvy. The end result to all this is: we should be more wary of the antics of certain retailers operating within our midst.

Jeff Yong, after making his mark in the twisty maze of mainstream journalism, has finally decided to enjoy what he does best – observing the unusual and recounting the gleeful. He can be contacted at lifestyle.borak@gmail.com.