The AEON Member Plus Visa Card - A Value Proposition Review

Ever since my wife gave me a supplementary AEON Member Card, we as a family have sticked to shopping at AEON for our groceries almost exclusively (and to a slightly less degree, general merchandise shopping as well).

For the most part, we’d be paying with a Maybank Ikhwan MasterCard credit card after swiping the AEON member card. There were a few benefits of this setup. With grocery shopping, we’d be eligible to get 5% cashback every month, capped at 50 ringgit (“achieved” by paying for 1000 ringgit of groceries). Then, we’d be receiving both Maybank TreatsPoints as well as AEON points. Many years ago, this was quite rewarding. Even when paying for general merchandise where the cashback doesn’t apply, I still subjectively felt that earning both points plus cashback was worth it.

Things have changed since then. Firstly, the value of those TreatsPoints have greatly dropped. Secondly AEON is transitioning to drop the previous member card to a new card that serves as both a member card and a debit card: the AEON Member Plus Visa Card. Now the question is whether doing it the old way is still better, or if there’s better value in paying exclusively with the AEON debit card.

To find out, we need to know the value of paying exclusively with that debit card.

These images from AEON’s website summarize it best:

What AEON seems to do here is that at the end of every month, they will convert whatever points you have left into cash that is debited into the card. What happens is that there is no longer a need to manually redeem those points into cash vouchers.

Let’s see what you get if you pay for 1000 ringgit of groceries using the debit card itself:
2 x 1000 = 2000 points
2000 / 200 = 10 ringgit

Based on this, the value of the reward of the AEON card is at least a fifth less than the Maybank card.

It seems clear that unless if you’re shopping at the general merchandise areas, swiping with the member card and then paying with the credit card for the cashback seems to be the way to go. This is especially when considering the hassle that you have to go through to use this card, as you have to top it up before use.

Let's Play Crossy Road Castle (6 September 2020)

Met up with my family for 1 day over the weekend and recorded this with my daughter. Need to find a way to deal with the poor connection and overall laggines.

1st ever recorded multiplayer session. Was playing with my daughter while disturbed and distracted by one of the baby twins. Getting the connection to work w...

Virtual Live Anaesthesia Workshop - Regional Anaesthesia for the Chest

If you came here just to watch the video, here you go:

As usual, production notes follow.

The company that handled the live webinar definitely delivered, allowing footage from 3 different areas in Malaysia to be broadcast live via YouTube with only insignificant hitches. There was only 1 pre-recorded session; everything else was live. There was no noise to fix (thank God!). For me there were only a few things to do/fix:

1. To open the video, I created a small clip of the flyer panning the profile of the speakers and schedule, which then transitions into the introduction.

2. In a live broadcast, there would obviously be breaks between sessions. Even a few seconds is unnecessary in this on demand viewing format, so I deleted most of the unnecessary pauses (and even some dialogue) and added some simple transitions.

3. The speakers all speak obviously in different volumes (even in the same clip), so these were fixed with a compressor plugin, with adjustments made only to the input gain for the different speakers (and even with the same speaker but different segment. The aim is based as my now usual norm as per the recommendations here: around -12 to -15; there is no risk of peaking/clipping, but the listener will have to turn up the volume a bit (but avoid distortion). It was too tedious to fix every segment where levels drifted within the same clip; only those obvious (too soft dialogue, noises like sneezes) were edited. I noticed that my job wasn’t perfect, ie there were was some segments peaking at -9 on average, and there was some averaging -15, but in editing an almost 2 hour video as a non-pro (coming out as a 7 GB H.264 file) , I think my job was passable enough and I won’t go for perfect. Best to listen on dedicated speakers away from outside noise.

4. Only minimal highlighting was required (where the somehow the pointer of the ultrasound machine did not appear in the broadcast). These were easily solved with a few arrows and titles.

5. In the Q&A session, where both venues were broadcast simultaneously, I noticed that the audio from Johor lagged behind the video a bit. Wherever it was significant (e.g. where the team from Johor were answering questions), I pushed the audio back (around 17 frames in a 30fps video).

Audio effects used.

The compressor settings

A lil’ bit of low boost for everyone

Fixing the audio lag

Bringing the audio levels down but more even overall

There were of course some stuff that I have no power to fix:

1. There was some echo in the HKL demo, probably from the panelist mics picking up the audio broadcast from the moderator. I don’t know what is the fix for this, unless it is intended for only the speakers to hear from the moderator/other speakers.

2. The footage from Gleneagles could benefit from a bit of color adjustments. But since I’m using a cheap TV as my laptop monitor for now, I can’t fix it.

But overall, I do feel that this is a distinct polishing job of the already very good live footage; this was not a simple copy and upload. Enjoy.

(Do inform if you see any obvious need for improvement of the presentation; otherwise the version uploaded is final)