Equitable and Visa Promo Problems

I bought the N70 Music Edition yesterday to take advantage of two promos: Equitable Card’s “Grand Gadgets Promo”, and the VISA Rebate promo. Both had problems.

I got the flyer from my credit card statement, then planned my purchase. I went to the SM Mall of Asia yesterday and got the phone from Memo Express. This went through a manual transaction process. When I got home, I entered the details into the VISA page. It would not accept an entry without a time – manual transactions have no timestamp. So I entered the approximate time of purchase together with the manual verification code. No go. I had to leave out the verification code to get it to work.

This morning, I posted the blog entry about my purchase. I looked at the flyer again. I totally forgot, there was a free gift to pick, plus raffle entries to even more gadgets: Canon Powershot A420 and DC100, Motorola PEBL, Acer desktop and laptop (no model specified), and a Lenovo N100 laptop. So I went back to the Mall of Asia.

I went to the middle of the mall and asked for the redemption booth. A funny thing happened. The event is a joint promo between Equitable and Banco de Oro – preparing for the merger, perhaps? I was directed to the BDO booth, where I was given a copy of a magazine and the raffle stubs. The person in charge then asked for my card. I presented my Equitable co-branded card. Oops. Wrong booth!

I walked over to the Equitable booth. Problem. I did not bring the receipt from Memo Express. The flyer did not mention it but they wanted to stamp it as claimed. They did not want to honor my transaction slip without the official receipt. I went to the cellphone shop and got a copy of the OR. I picked a rolled piece of paper, and won… a ballpen. So for all my trouble, I was able to draw again, for which I got a passport holder. I got the raffle tickets and filled them out.

This was the funniest part. They did not have the ballot box to put the raffle  tickets in. They pointed one out, but it was in the BDO booth. No go. They then said that it was by the stage. None. I just left the stubs with the crew. I hope they really will put them in the ballot box if and when they have one. I wonder what happened to all the other customers, did they not fill in the raffle tickets?