Everyone thinks of Singapore Airlines as one of the best airlines in the world and as a national icon it ranks up there with the Marina Bay Sands building for foreigners who speak of Singapore today.
The Home Page (above) is hardly impressive - and as a baby boomer I wish they had used larger fonts. And LESS variety - it's an "Ah Beng" goes to town look with font variations galore. Distracting rather than functional.
And what large calendars with small typefaces - wasted use of precious space.
When I got frustrated with the web site and what I was trying to achieve, I clicked on SQCorporate (see top of the page) to find it was not about the company - instead the link leads to their corporate travel web site! (I had been looking for someone to email about my trials and tribulations.)
Somewhere along my route through their web site, I came across the web page (below):
Again, wasted space as there is needless repetition. The first mention of "Sign Up for our newsletter" doesn't take one anywhere, although the second one does.
And see those dots - we are meant to do the work to find where they might lead us. Who has time to go on a treasure hunt these days?
The grey panel at the bottom - could have been better laid out so that we oldies need not strain our eyes to read the 'small print'.
Anyway, all this is subjective and there will be eloquent defenders of the cause! But what is unforgivable is that the web site is almost unusable, at least in my case.
In my defense, when I gave up and called the Singapore Krisflyer number from Hong Kong, their automated answering service acknowledged that there were problems with their Web site and warned of large call volumes which might affect the waiting time. So it isn't just me.
When I tried to change my flight for a later one on the same day, it offered a flight that I selected. However it rejected my Krisflyer number (the same one I have had for years and with which I accessed the site) and would not implement the change.
That's when I called Krisflyer and spoke to Ms Cardoz who verified my details and then informed me that yes, it was possible to change my fight but I would have to pay more. (The web page I visited said that I did NOT have to pay more). I could, however, be put on a wait list.
This morning (22 June), just out if curiosity,I visited the site and was informed that the flight I requested was available for selection. The hitch being that only my current flight had a little circle for selection; not the flight I wanted and on which I am waitlisted!
Being Singaporean, I sense a kind of Singapore logic at work here in the writing of the code for the site - and that leads to some of the dead ends I encountered.
I don't know why we proud Singaporeans don't just examine some of the leading airline web sites and do what they do - and in some case, improve on what they do. Why reinvent the wheel? It's not as if there aren't enough good alloy wheels to copy instead of starting with raw metal, an anvil and a hammer?
Maybe I have been away, but I have not noticed many complaints or even coverage in our diligent main stream media bringing SQ's shortcomings to light. Perhaps I am the only complainer in Singapore - or are we a nation so used to being treated like spittoons (I did not make this one up, I read it; a sportswriter recently said that of one T. Woods' attitude to writers and the public)?
