With travel opening up, Google Search Console has been seeing an up-trend in terms of people searching for terms like –

• uob miles redemption
• uob miles conversion
• ocbc$ to miles conversion
• uob miles to krisflyer
• uob krisflyer miles conversion

I have been writing these little guides because I was looking for such information in the past myself, and I’m glad that they are helpful to others.

Now that more people are planning their trips overseas, it is no surprise that people are looking for these information in order to start making their redemptions.

Needless to say, I was one of them who is calling in to the KrisFlyer call centre and trying to make my redemption for the US$100 (plus taxes) KrisFlyer business class flights.

Well, turns out it wasn’t easy.

First, the customer service might not know what I’m trying to do i.e. pay for a stopover when making a saver business class redemption – and advised me to do it online, which can’t be done.

Even when they do, they can’t do anything because they’ll need to have an available redemption agent in order to help me with it. And since they’re perpetually unavailable, they’ll likely try to arrange for a call-back for me (supposedly within 72 hours) but that never did happen for me.

Especially when travel could be a time-sensitive event and other arrangements might revolve around the flights, it could prove to be tricky when we’re unable to make our bookings promptly.

Why not give this a try? Kris Chatbot to the rescue

Singapore Airlines have a chatbot that can help with various questions.

Although you might think that it is fully automated, there is one option that can put you through to a live agent to chat with, if you are lucky.

This happened for me, and I was able to get the first part done online by telling the agent what I needed – exactly what was written in my guide e.g. redemption of business saver award flight from A to B via stopover at C and I want to pay US$100 for the stopover.

Once this part is done, SIA will email you with a tentative itinerary with a booking reference for your verification. At this point, the booking isn’t confirmed yet.

The only thing that cannot be completed is to actually pay for it – and this means that I’d have to, once again, get in touch with KrisFlyer call centre.

If you’re thinking what difference does it make, well at this point I already have a booking reference and itinerary ready, and all I need to do is to pay.

Upon calling in, I can just quote the booking reference and say that I have an confirmed itinerary that I need to pay for. Otherwise, it will expire.

In my example, I actually called them twice, and I also told them I didn’t receive any call-back in my first attempt. Because the itinerary has an expiry date before which I needed to pay, I was able to get routed to a redemption agent after indicating that I’m willing to wait until one was available.

Do note that all these troubles are because of the need to speak to a redemption agent for an insertion of a stopover at the cost of US$100.

If you’re just to make a simple saver award redemption with no stopovers, just use the website online to do it.