The staff at the A-Lounge counter swiped my card a second time, then a third. Nothing. “Sir, it’s not showing up in our system. Do you have your Priority Pass card?” I didn’t. I’d left it at home, because I genuinely didn’t think I’d need it.
I’ve had free lounge access through RCBC for a while now, and it’s one of those perks that quietly pays for itself. Airport food and drinks are priced like you have no other choice, because you don’t, and a lounge gets you out of that: comfortable seats, charging stations, and none of the markup. When a bank throws that in for free, it’s hard to argue with the value.
For years, this was simple. Back when PAGGS was still open in Terminal 1 and Terminal 3, you’d show your card, your passport, and your boarding pass, and you were in. No questions asked. When PAGGS shut down for renovation, RCBC started sending me a voucher code on the day of the flight so I could use A-Lounge instead. It worked. Until this trip.
No Voucher, No Card, No Entry
This time, no voucher code showed up. I figured I’d just present the card like before and sort it out at the counter. That’s when the swiping started, and the “it’s not working” started, and I realized they genuinely weren’t going to let me in.
I asked a few more questions, hoping there was a workaround. There wasn’t. The card that had gotten me into lounges for years was, as far as their terminal was concerned, invisible.
Maya Saved the Trip
I remembered I had the Maya app installed and that my Maya Black Credit Card comes with Dragon Pass lounge access. I pulled it up, showed the staff the barcode, they scanned it, and I was in. No card, no swipe, no drama. Just a phone screen.
It’s a strange kind of relief, being bailed out by the backup plan you almost forgot you had.
RCBC Doesn’t Seem to Know Their Own Cards Are Failing
What stuck with me more than the inconvenience was what I saw while I was still at the counter. An elderly couple ahead of me had been refused entry too, and they looked genuinely confused. They had their Bankard with them, RCBC’s old name, and couldn’t understand why that wasn’t enough anymore. If it had happened to me, a flyer who knows the system, I can only imagine how disorienting it was for them.
That’s the part that felt like a pattern rather than a one-off glitch.
I called RCBC while I waited for our flight. The representative told me all I needed to do was show the card, that the staff shouldn’t even be swiping it, just looking at it and letting me through. I told them that wasn’t what was happening on the ground, that the staff were swiping it into a terminal and getting nothing. They kept insisting it should work anyway.
At some point I stopped trying to convince someone on the phone that what was happening in front of me was, in fact, happening. I ended the call and went to get food and drinks while we waited to board. Arguing about a credit card at an airport counter isn’t a hill worth dying on, and honestly, it was a little embarrassing to be doing it at all.
