The offering seemed simple, and being an explorer, I was convinced enough to give it a spin. Little did I know, I was going to be in for a surprise! Convenience my foot! More like conveniently hidden fees! It reminds me of the time I blogged about Tiger Airways trying to hide certain fees too – read about it here.

With my iPhone, I logged onto m.fireflyz.com.my and was promptly redirected to flyfirefly.mobi. Everything seemed easy enough – aside from the little niggles I discovered along the way.

Wait a minute… after selecting my preferred flight details, you take me to complete passenger details? But, but… I want to know HOW MUCH it is going to cost before I proceed! If it’s beyond my budget, then I can select an alternate date and time! Bad, bad UI (Plug: Do you want to hire Integricity for your user interface needs? *grin*). Oh, and what is with the copyright, by the way?

After tediously completing the passenger information (for which I had to go back and forth because it expected me to complete my identity card details, though not stipulated as mandatory), it finally shows me the price. I glanced cursorily at the booking fee and assumed it was a standard cost for all bookings.

But out of curiosity, I tried the website on my MacBook Pro. AND, I was surprised that there was no booking fee levied. This just goes to show how airlines are continuing to fleece customers who use their mobile channels, when they should be promoting them instead.

Heed the warning – you may not get the best deals by booking via mobile channels, or even online for that matter.

And thus, a new chapter for thebackpackr.com unfolds – I vow to blog more regularly and talk about topics that will really be relevant for those interested in anything creative, technology and business.

Any feedback or suggestions you’d like to give me?

OLD AND CLUTTERED

NEW AND IMPROVED!

I kept getting the same error over and over again, and decided there’s a better way of overcoming this problem. Thanks to Nazham, he had some pointers on his blog to share on how you can edit the file (/wp-admin/includes/file.php) and modify this line:

$response = wp_remote_get($url, array(’timeout’ => 30));

to increase the timeout to something longer like 120.

However, this method apparently is overwritten when you upgrade your WordPress installation in the future. Felix Ker has a plugin that permanently fixes this problem, perhaps you could try it out instead.

Initially, I was elated to find that flights via Tiger Airways were at zero dollars, and you merely pay SGD25 nett from Malaysia to Singapore. So a return flight is SGD50 each, which is really dirt cheap. With that perception in mind, I go about processing my booking…

First, I am presented with a summary of my flight, which is fine. SGD100 for 2 persons translates to MYR228 which is absolutely fine.

After it times out several times, I persist and finally get to the part where you’re supposed to put in your credit card details. Obediently, I comply and suddenly, I am presented with this screen.

Hold on a minute… my memory isn’t that bad, and I distinctly remember the figures MYR228 – what’s this extra MYR50 that is being snuck in? I click cancel and return to the previous screen where an inconspicuous section says “All bookings made using an electronic form of payment are subject to a CONVENIENCE FEE per passenger per sector”.

What on earth is this?

1. You blew your budget while developing the booking system, and are forced to charge us for it
2. You’re trying to be sly-er than the coyote
3. Tiger hopes our eye sight isn’t so good, and they can hoodwink us by 50 bucks

Whatever it is, how can you pass on a convenience fee to us? You jolly well are inconveniencing me and driving me insane. As a web user, I feel this in an injustice and am really disappointed to experience this. I would rather they have told me upfront that there is going to be a fee for booking.

Don’t mask it and coin funky terms such as “convenience fees”, that’s just not cool. Tiger Airways, if you’re reading this, I hope you reconsider your devious strategy and position your miscellaneous fees transparently and not at the last possible moment, without even putting it in the billing summary.

Even Facebook was trying to serve me their localized ads. Sorry, I don’t read Arabic, though!

Our enterprising detectives at my office – Integricity, set off immediately to google the handles, and found the friendster profile for manadocoding. The Alexa traffic rank for their website at present is 575,545 which is a lot better than TheBackpackr (sigh… maybe I should go hack some websites… *grin*)

Upon googling Malingsia, it pulls out quite a lot of definitions, with one from the urban dictionary stating:

Malingsia (Noun) is a sarcastic slang for Malaysians. originally combined from 2 words “Maling” (Javanese, meaning “thief”) and “Malaysia. Malaysia keeps claiming Indonesia’s national cultures as malaysia’s belonging, that’s the etymology of the word Malingsia.

Uh oh, looks like some Malaysians have gotten on the bad side of Indonesians. Sorry!

There’s even a website malingsia.com (which was down, at press time – I always wanted to say that! hahah) which I retrieved from Google’s cache that shows a blog of sorts against Malaysians.

Once again, on behalf of the rude and obnoxious Malaysians, I would like to apologise.

And to our city hall aka Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur, please get someone to fix your website NOW! It’s embarassing!

Watch this casual chat video as Alex spends some time with Jacqueline Ann Surin and Cindy Tham of The Nut Graph, 12 hours before Malaysia’s latest new media news website launches. They hang out at Integricity’s office warming party before heading off to a sleepless night!

Get to know the 2 dynamic women behind The Nut Graph and their love for ice cream! Check out www.thenutgraph.com – making sense of politics and pop culture.

What do you think of The Nut Graph? Is there enough space for yet another new media player? Let me know your thoughts.

Screenshot of thenutgraph.com

Music credit: Papo Ross – Mi Camioncito (Beatpick)