Received the cards today. The staff at card centre the gardens is good.

About a week, but the staff told me if I had directly went to a maybank card center it would have been faster.

-

On a side note, has anyone been having problems making online purchases using the AMEX?

yeah, i did my application at a branch... then went to that card center.

first time using amex too. before this 5x TP deal never found a need to use an amex card. I knew the CVV is in front, but I've no idea whether the card was charged or not, no OTP, m2u doesn't show any transaction...

so far I've tried adding my card to uber (failed), namecheap (failed), asos (seems like it went through)

I think I will call the CS again today.

after a lot of back and forth with different maybank CSRs and some online merchants today, this woman from MB finally told me AMEX blocks a lot of transactions from merchants by default due to fraud, even paypal

so apparently the process is to call in AFTER the transaction fails, request for them to NOT decline paypal (or any other merchants), stipulate a time frame (max one month). For longer time periods like "as long as the card is valid", they require you to email in with a LIST of the merchants you won't want blocked.

Wahlao.

This is for the AMEX only btw, I haven't encountered any declines with the VI.

Btw, I requested the SMS alerts threshold to be changed to RM1, she told me it will take 3 days is this true?

isn't that... worrying?

Has anyone tried converting to Krisflyer miles using their MBB2Premier TPs? On the TP site it says only for VI, wondering if they will allow TPs from the amex card to be used?

Just wondering why are you guys redeeming enrich miles still, when they had a massive devaluation of their award redemption chart in Feb?

With krisflyer and now asiamiles as redemption options, aren't those two programs a much better deal?

Not bad offers, a lot 30-50% off so that the rates are still sane

This post has been edited by ignorantcow: May 12 2015, 02:18 PM

I say listen to your wife... MH flies their 20 years old never updated angled lie flat product on a 772 to AMS. Comparing to SQ, even their older J seat blows anything MH has out of the water unfortunately.

BTW just to share, my latest redemption:

KUL-HKG-PVG (CX)
PVG-NRT (JL)
NRT-BKK (JL)
BKK-KUL (RJ)

Ticket worth: RM13,895 http://goo.gl/flights/PB3S

Asiamiles: 80,000 miles + RM1,176.49 in taxes

80*4770 = 381,600 (TP needed)
38,1600/5 = RM76,320
RM76,320-RM1,176 = RM75,143
RM13,895/RM75,143 = 0.185

18.5% return, not bad ah?

Didn't check Enrich because it would have cost 105,000 miles to redeem the same ticket.

Award redemptions are unfortunately not straightforward.

A typical OW redemption 'journey' for me involves:

- Build a 'valid' route either through Google Flights or ITA Matrix (limiting by OW airlines). This is to figure out what kind of possible routings you can get between city pairs.

- Because Enrich/AsiaMiles/most OW FFPs allow up to 5 'free' stopovers on OW redemptions, it is popular to redeem trips that have multiple destinations that are in the same region. Say if you are flying to Europe, why not hit Germany, Denmark, Sweden etc 'on the way', for the same amount of miles? Although a straightforward direct flight roundtrip is the easiest to figure out, it is definitely not the best value.

- Checking on BA.com, JAL.com, AA.com, Qantas.com for award availability through their FFP 'award search' engines. BA.com is usually the most reliable out of all. All sites have problems with phantom availability. Use these tools to figure out what airlines generally have award space available instead of going back and forth with the phone agents (it becomes VERY frustrating for both parties and the phone agent doesn't get anything for helping you).

- GCMap.com is particularly useful for calculating miles for distance based award programs like Asiamiles e.g. my upcoming trip: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=kul-pvg-nrt-bkk-kul - just nice 7114mi, just 386 miles shy of the 4,001-7,500 tier

- Once you have a set idea of the route you want, the airlines involved on the route, then it is time to call the phone agents. It's even better if you know exactly the flight number you want, not hard to find out (using Google Flights or ITA).

- Unfortunately phone agents are NOT the best people to deal with but there's no other choice. The online form goes to email and when it comes to award booking you need to lock down the booking ASAP because there's 3983249212 other people fighting for the limited award space not just from the same program but from all the other programs in OW.

- Get ready to call multiple times, be put on hold for long periods while the phone agent waits for Amadeus to (hopefully) respond to the query. I've gotten twice when the entire system went down and had to try again a week later. This is extremely frustrating because I wanted to confirm that the route I wanted is bookable and there is availability before transferring miles into my AM account from Maybank (took about 7 working days), during which one of the segments on the route I wanted became unavailable (CX, on their own flights are pretty generous with J seats, but other airlines usually only 'release' 2). Basically a lot of waiting.

- Once the stars align (every segment on your route is available and your miles are in your account), the agent can book and issue ticket straight away. This will 'hold' the itinerary and you can proceed to make payment for the taxes. Once you get an email with your booking ref./PNR (the 6 letter combination), you can go to the respective airlines website to check that the PNR is indeed valid (go to "Manage your booking", enter last name and PNR). The airlines website should allow you to select seats, even.

- If you get a stupid agent, hang up and try again.

Good luck!

Herc, AsiaMiles has two different charts for redemptions.

The first one (which is 120k for 5001-7500) is for itineraries involving either just CX/KA or CX/KA+one other partner airline, and allows for one ways (with clever routing can get you a 'boomerang' redemption)

The second one is for two OW airlines (excluding CX/KA) or three OW airlines (can include one segment on CX/KA) but only allows for roundtrip. It is on this chart that 4,001-7500 tier is 80k.

https://www.asiamiles.com/am/en/redeem/charts

Malaysia Airlines: all-new business class for A330s, Boeing 777s

http://www.ausbt.com.au/malaysia-airlines-...30s-boeing-777s

Finally.

Let's hope so. Those angled lie flats are so horribly outdated............. and for the 'flagship' 'golden' lounges in KUL desperately lag behind the likes of HKG. Cathay's plethora of great lounges in that airport is just insane.