starhub – miyagi.sg

Good Things Must Share: StarHub Rewards New Site

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Redemption is a difficult thing. You know when you’ve done something wrong and you’re thinking of what you can do to make things right and it never seems to be adequate?

Well, no, I’m not talking about that kind of redemption. In our uniquely Singapore parlance, “redemption” usually means you get rewarded for your loyalty to some kind of consumer brand or product.

StarHub is one such brand, and if you’ve been a customer long enough, you’d know that for every dollar you spend on your StarHub service – like your mobile subscription, cable TV or internet connection, you’d have earned points for them.

These points would then qualify for “redemption”. This is where things used to be difficult. You’d go to the Rewards site, scroll through how many products you can redeem for your number of points and end up maybe only getting some voucher to redeem again against your next phone bill or something.

How many of you have signed up for some telco, earned loyalty points and gone to the rewards website JUST ONCE AND THEN GIVEN UP NEVER TO RETURN AGAIN?

GOT, RIGHT? WAH LAO EH! I’ve been a StarHub customer for more than a decade, and I’ve never redeemed anything. Or at least anything that I remember.

But, that’s about to change as StarHub relaunches its new StarHub Rewards website at www.starhub.com/redeem

I recently checked out the website and they have a much wider range of items to redeem. After all those years of painful phone bills, I’ve actually accumulated quite a few points. Dammit, if these could be exchanged for real cash, I’d be a bit richer.

But if you look at the site, you’d see it’s not that bad. They have a good range of adult and kid-friendly rewards. I might consider a short stay at a hotel on Sentosa, a dinner at a big-name (got signboard) seafood restaurant, and seeing as how expensive aquarium tickets are and how persuasive a five year old boy can be, I might cash in for a two adult, one child reward.

Better yet, it’s now even easier to redeem your hard earned points because you can get it off your mobile devices and tablets too.

Come to think of it, you may want to use your points for friends’ birthday presents. Just ‘cos you used points to get them stuff doesn’t mean that the thought didn’t count.

This is a reward site that is finally serious about giving you something for your loyalty. If you have points, BBBMTL!

Follow my twitter feed @miyagi for more exclusive treats from StarHub Rewards.

StarHub Loves Every Football Loving Bro (And Chick)

I have often been frowned on by people when I refer to the sport as “soccer”. I never knew how much people here love football. And with these lovers of football, I have something special to share.

But first, let me tell you why Americans and Australians sometimes call it soccer.

When the game as you love it was invented and codified, there were other forms of the game which were (and still are) being played under different rules written in different towns or countries.

To distinguish the different footballs from each other, people would refer to the game played under rules written by the football Union at Rugby as Rugby Football Union or simply Rugby. The game played under rules written in Scotland and Ireland was referred to as Gaelic Football.

Australian Rules Football is derived from Gaelic Football, and American Football is derived from some form of Rugby.

The football that is the most popular sport in the world had its rules established under an organisation called the Football Association – after which the famous F.A. Cup is named – and in England at the turn of the 19th century had to be referred to as Association Football in order to distinguish it from the other football codes in conversation.

So say you played Association Football in those early days, and you wanted to know if the bloke next to you shared your interest, you’d ask if he played Association Football too, and that’d be a bit of a mouthful, so you’d have called it Assoc. Football, or Soccer.

OK, now that the history lesson is out of the way, let me tell you why you should be happy this weekend apart from the fact that it’s the longest weekend of this half of the year.

1. You no longer have to sign up for Singtel Mio just to watch the Premier League. The new cross carriage rules (thank you MDA – this is the best thing you’ve done as an Authority).

2. Even though it costs money to watch it still, Starhub has given the green light to give all subscribers a $30 a month rebate over the next two Premier League seasons. This applies to all StarhubTV customers.

3. You no longer have to tolerate lags and freezes on your games (heehee) and because StarhubTV will put up all Premier League games in full HD Glory Glory Man United, please make sure you switch your set top boxes to the HD sets soon.

How to watch BPL on StarhubTV:

1. Get your NRIC and StarhubTV Subscription ID from your Starhub bill or cal 1633 for it to be SMSd to you.

2. Bring them to any Singtel shop and sign up for BPL cross carried on StarhubTV.

3. You will automatically receive your $30 monthly rebate in your Starhub monthly bill because Starhub loves every football loving bro.

See www.starhub.com/therealbros for more details on how to bring football home to the green playing fields where they belong.

Pro-tip: Sign up before Monday 12 Aug to make sure you catch the season opener on 17 Aug.

Http://youtu.be/mSXEYBnOBAU

Sparky’s back

Starhub’s popular TVC character returns in a new series of interactive ads to be screened from 26 August. How do you interact with the ad? You need to download the Hub It! app and fire it up.

I had a chance to try it out at a preview (and crashed the app), and it’s pretty impressive.

But of course, the important thing is, there are prizes to be won. In fact prizes have already been won.

This site is not SafeSurf safe

Someone tweeted yesterday afternoon that Starhub’s SafeSurf apparently blocks this site from curious young eyes.

The SafeSurf FAQ goes on to describe the service as “a “filtering” service that blocks out undesirable websites on the Internet.” OK, I can understand why some people dislike this blog, but to block a generation of minors (whose parents pay $2.50 per month for this VAS) from enjoying my occasional outbursts of profanity? I mean, come on, do you see any nude pictures on this site? Huh? Huh? Huh?

The Online Citizen gets Cassetted, but I get SafeSurfed. FML.

Worse still, I’m a Starhub Broadband (and cable and telephone) customer. WTH?

(@starhubcares has informed me that they’re looking into it – updates when available).

Update: @starhubcares tells me they’ve taken it off the banned wagon. Kids can now get here.

Our World Cup runneth away

Seriously, we’re really not going to get the World Cup on television?

MSN did a survey recently, and out of over 5,000 people who participated, 69% said they weren’t willing to pay a single cent to to watch a game. I guess that’s the national stance that got us into this mess in the first place.

It’s alright by me, cos I’m happy sitting at home watching the rugby on several channels on Starhub.
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