Andrea in Indonesia
25 May 2011
Earlier this month I had an 'overseas' trip to the Indonesian island of Batam. I had purchased a "1 Day Batam City/Shopping Tour with Live Seafood Lunch" for 1/2 price ($35) from Tip-it, an on-line discounter. I had never used Tip-it before but as this was the only package I had ever seen on these deal websites (Groupon, Deals etc.) that didn't state that you had to buy 2, I thought I'd get it. I am a "glass is half-full" person; in fact, I'm more like a "glass is brimming" kind of person and the silver-lining in the using Tip-it cloud is that I was introduced to Winston Kwek of Asiapoint Travel Brokers. I suspect he doesn't think of me as the silver-lining in this mess. The voucher I received indicated that bookings with Asiapoint were required. There was an address and a string of numbers that turned out to be a phone number. There was no email address nor website indicated. On my first attempt, I was not able to get up to the 6th floor because I arrived after 7 p.m. so the next time I got there about 6:35 p.m. and went up but the door was locked. I dialed the 8 digits and heard a phone ringing on the inside. I let it ring until my phone automatically hung up. No message offering office hours or taking a message came on. I returned home, Googled Asiapoint, found an enquiries email address and wrote a scathing email asking if this was some kind of scam. I then forwarded the email to customer service at Tip-it. The Tip-it people wrote back telling me to contact Winston and they then provided his email address. I called him to see if we couldn't get this sorted. It was Friday the 3rd. The non-refundable voucher stated "bookings to be made by 4 Jun 2011" and I wanted to go to Batam on Sunday the 5th. He knew immediately who I was I when I said "May I please speak to Winston?" He said "Is this Andrea?" Anyway, to make a very long story marginally shorter, he ended up having to send his daughter along because there was a minimum two pax per booking rule for this package, a fact Tip-it had omitted to mention.
Jennifer is the coolest person I have met in Singapore. She sports a funky hairstyle and has already done many things in her life worth writing about. She was crew on an oil tanker for a year! Thanks entirely to her, a rainy Sunday that would have been less than a footnote in my Singapore story became a truly enjoyable day. I hope to go back to Batam when the sun is shining.
