SGActive Plus: How much of a plus is it?

Booking sports facilities in Singapore is undergoing an upgrade... of sorts. I found this out earlier in the month when, on my daily evening swim at Clementi Swimming Complex, I was alerted to a poster by the entrance. This poster informed of an upcoming upgrade to the existing SGActive app on the 15th of August.

Informational posters.

On the 15th of August, the existing app would no longer be in use. All swim passes would need to be purchased on the new SGActive Plus web portal. Logging in to the new SGActive Plus web portal before the end of this month, would also get you 10 free credits. I wasted no time logging in because, being a regular user of the facilities, I needed to ensure that there would be minimal interruption to my lifestyle.

What happened

On the 13th of August, my current monthly pass expired and I had to purchase a new one. Due to the fact that it was not yet the 15th, I had to purchase my monthly swim pass from the old platform, with the understanding that this pass should still last an entire month. However, when I went to Clementi Swimming Complex again on the 15th of August, the gantries at the entrance had been blocked and now we needed new passes that had to be purchased from the new system.

No longer accessible.

The elderly attendant at the entrance cheerfully helped me navigate to the web portal and used one of my 10 free credits to purchase a pass for the day, assuring me that whatever I paid for my monthly pass previously, would be refunded in September. That was when I paused - if I had to do this every day till September arrived, the free credits would run out in no time. Surely this attendant should have helped me purchase a monthly pass (now known as a multi pass) instead? But no, he'd made an assumption. And now that I only had 9 credits left, attempting to purchase a 10 GSD monthly pass on the new platform would cost me a dollar. Not that I cared about the dollar - it was more the troublesome process of paying online. A process I could have avoided if this attendant had just thought to ask me instead of simply assuming a single pass was what I needed.

But that's OK. Didn't really want to get on this old man's case too much. It's not like he asked for any of this. I'm sure this was a great cushy retirement gig up to now.

Is this an improvement?

Well, in terms of the interface used to make purchases, I'm of the opinion that it would be extremely difficult to have any interface be worse than the one employed by the SGActive app. My feelings on this absolute abortion of an app have been made abundantly clear in my last review in 2018.

In terms of having to present an animated pass on my phone instead of simply having a reader at the gantry scan my Identity Card, I suppose one could argue that it's more secure. To use an Identity Card, one only needs to be in possession of said Identity Card. To use the pass displayed on the phone, one needs to be in possession of the phone and have the credentials (usually biometrics) necessary to log into the phone and access the SGActive Plus web account.

Animated
swim pass.

However, I'd also venture to say that in the event that a malicious actor came into possession of someone's Identity card, using it to obtain access to sports facilities wouldn't exactly be high on the list of things to do.

All said and done, I'm in favor of any proposed solution that will allow me to speak of the SGActive app in the past tense.

The real issue

So, the change was a good thing overall. The isssue I take with this, is the implementation of the change. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been the only one to be caught off-balance by the sudden nature of the cut-off.

One day we're using this platform, and a day later, we have to use something else. In most cases of system upgrades, old and new systems are run in parallel to minimize disruption to users while preparing them for the inevitable. Plus, with more time to prepare, the attendant would (hopefully) have done a better job. There'd be less confusion, for sure.

The new
10 SGD
monthly
swim pass.

The 10 free credits was a good idea, both as an incentive for early adoption, and a good way to ease users over to the new platform. Unfortunately, cases like mine happened; and I wonder if 12, maybe 15 free credits would have been better if we absolutely had to do that sudden cut-off. At the very least, we could have used those credits to figure the system out. Make some mistakes.

As it was, whatever money I spent on the old platform that couldn't be moved to the new, would be refunded next month. At the end of next month. It's fine, it's 10 bucks. Still annoying, but not a show stopper.

Final thoughts

Not to be too critical of change; it was about time. Though one might argue that the time for a new improved platform was roughly ten years ago when the app first came out; it was that bad.

Hope your day's going swimmingly well,
T___T