I recently posted the below complaint on the hellopeter website and emailed it to 4 voyager email addresses. Doubt I will get a reponse:
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I had miles about to expire so I redeemed a Voyager award certificate which is valid for six months. I tried to book a flight via their website but booking a flight is impossible as the ‘mileage keeper’ seats are always sold out. I phoned the call centre explained that I would like a ‘mileage keeper’ seat from Jhb to CT any weekend, departing late friday afternoon and returning late Sunday afternoon. Is this an unreasonable request? Seats sold out even 6 months in advance.

So I asked to have my air award exchanged for a non-air award. I was told that I should have changed my award within the first 3 months of issue? I read their terms and conditions on their website and this is not stated.

SAA is unreasonable and do not have enough ‘mileage keeper’ seats available on their flights. Surely they should release more ‘mileage keeper’ seats for Voyager members especially over weekends?
My miles have now expired as I could not book a flight or exchange my award. I will never use SAA again.

Virgin Airways offers a far superior miles program and so does BA. I will use these airlines in future

An exchange of emails between SAA and me (showing their true colours)

From: Emile Myburgh
Sent: 08 May 2009 06:20 PM
To: Desmond Sampson
Subject: SAA customer loyalty

Dear Sirs,

Last year I wrote a letter that was published in your October edition so I don’t expect this letter to be published.  However, I feel compelled to reply to acting CEO Chris Smyth’s appeal to SAA’s passengers’ loyalty in getting the airline through these troubled times.

Mr Smyth, nothing would give me more pleasure than abiding by your plea but a couple of recent changes at SAA really do not contribute to your appeal.  I travel to Brazil 5 times a year and am a Gold Voyager member.  Last year I accumulated around 70 000 miles, all of them on SAA, except for about 9000 flying fellow Star Alliance Member TAP to London via Lisbon.  This comfortably secured my gold card for a second year in a row and I must tell you, I really enjoy the benefits.

However, recently I’ve noticed that, while your fares to Brazil haven’t gone down, you now only give me 50% of the miles, because the booking class is now class L and no longer class Q.  This means that, even if I fly as often as last year, I won’t get the Gold card again, even though I’ll in fact spend more money on aeroplane tickets.  Then there is also the issue of all the taxes that one has to pay when booking a Voyager ticket, which makes it less attractive accumulating all those miles and more appealing looking at the competition and simply forgetting about Voyager and just buying a ticket on the cheapest airline flying to wherever I want to go.  Even your coveted Premium Credit Card is not so appealing anymore.  I have now spent my R60000 entitling me to a free companion ticket.  However, there is one big catch.  Let’s say I want to take my partner to Brazil.  I have to buy a K class ticket, which costs around R12000.  Then, I still have to pay around R4000 in taxes for my companion.  This adds up to R16000 (R18000 if one adds the Voyager credit card fee on top of that).  If I buy two L class tickets, I will pay R14000.  Where is the incentive still to pay the exorbitant annual card fee?  I’m seriously thinking of cancelling this credit card and just using my Diners Club card which gives almost as many miles, with a much lower annual fee.

So, what I’m saying is this: I’m not really using my miles for free tickets for myself,  I give them away to my family.  The real joy of the Gold voyager card is that extra baggage allowance, the access to Star Alliance lounges with a guest, the business class check in, the bonus miles and the preferential seating.  That is what guarantees my loyalty, not the free flights.  In fact, even if you take away the free flights but still give me a gold card with all those other benefits, I’d still fly with SAA.  However, by taking this away SAA is effectively telling me that my custom is worth 50% less to you, although the price increases.  And this is what makes that, when I have an alternative, I won’t fly SAA.  As my preferred route is to Brazil for business reasons, regrettably, you have me hooked.  But I’m just waiting for TAM Brazilian Airlines (whose Fidelidade programme I am also a member of) to finally start flying between Sao Paulo and Johannesburg and then it is “adeus” SAA, unless you start valuing my custom again in the same way as you are appealing for my loyalty.

One final question: with oil prices one third of what they were last year this time, why are you still levying a fuel levy as if oil were still at $147 a barrel?

Kind regards,

Emile Myburgh

From: Jackie Cronje [mailto:JackieCronje@flysaa.com]
Sent: 21 May 2009 09:20 AM
To: Emile Myburgh
Subject: FW: letter to Sawubona (Emile Myburgh)

Dear Mr Myburg,

Thank you for your letter written to the Sawubona Magazine. On behalf of Voyager I would like to comment as follow.

50% mileage accrual for certain fare classes:

We are proud to say, that SAA Voyager is still one of the frequent flyer programs that awards 50% miles for lower purchased classes. A lot of our Star Carrier Airlines do not reward miles

for lower classes at all. SAA has recently aligned all class fares in a simpler way in different class fare families. Voyager is currently busy looking at these fares, to establish the value vs. accrual

miles, in order to ensure value of miles for the fare that the customer paid.

Airport Taxes on Voyager tickets:

All competitive Frequent Flyer loyalty programs charge airport taxes when redeeming miles for flight awards.

Airport taxes are paid on all airline tickets and this tax does not go to SAA, but to the Airports Company of South Africa. Different airlines treat some of these taxes in a different fashion, so some may absorb a portion of the taxes in the ticket prices ie the fuel surcharge. This means they will not show up as a “tax” but will be part of the ticket price. Below please find the different taxes:

. VAT which is 14% of the fare – Revenue tickets (We do not charge VAT on Voyager tickets)

. Passenger Service Charges, required by the Airports Company of SA and Aviation Co-ordination Services as well as a small administration fee

. Civil Aviation Authority Passenger Safety charge

. Fuel surcharge which is charged by airlines to cope with volatile fuel prices

Voyager unfortunately has no control over the amount of airport taxes charged.

Companion Ticket:

Voyager is constantly looking at the Voyager credit card product offering.

When the Companion ticket was introduced, qualifying fare classes were Y B M K only, after we have looked at the valued we have introduced a lower fare namely H/class

that also qualifies for the companion ticket. I take note, that it still stays expensive. The companion ticket holds a higher value if you purchase tickets in business class, or if you

are a business man, where the company pays for your tickets. We are busy with a strategic value meetings looking at all the credit card benefits, establishing the value of the

benefits attached to each card type. We will communicate the changes to all members as soon as the proposal has been concluded.

I hope that you will find my answers satisfactory. I would like to thank you for your support, and would like to assure you that we value you as one of our Elite Voyager members.

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you need further assistance with Voyager.

Jacqui Cronje
Voyager Product and Marketing Specialist
Tel 011 978 1339
Fax 011 978 9865
e-mail jackiecronje@flysaa.com

Dear Ms Cronje,

Thank you for your reply.

The bottom line remains, Voyager and SAA are no longer offering the same attractive product that it used to.  You can be as proud as you want to be by still giving 50% miles on low class fares, but considering that these new low classes cost the same or more as high class fares did in the past,  I am left with a slight feeling of being tricked while SAA hides behind meaningless (for the passenger at least) letters.  Incidentally, there are airlines that don’t go quite as low as giving only 50% of the miles, some give 90% (TAM in Brazil, for example).  Anyway, why 50%?  Why not 90% or 75%?  The way you put it makes it sound like I should be grateful to get anything at all.  Not a good way to keep my custom.

As a voyager member for 13 years, I feel slightly perplexed if not insulted that you would assume that I didn’t know how the airport taxes on voyager tickets work, but thank you for the explanation (which is also contained on your website and brochure, and if that didn’t tell, I would have noticed it each time I buy a voyager ticket).  Everybody knows how the airport taxes work.  The point is, the amount of the fuel levy which you disguise as a tax is based on an oil price that was $147 a barrel.  Now it is $60.  Why don’t you pass the saving on to us?  You simply call it a tax so that you can say to us: “on voyager tickets you don’t pay for the fare, only taxes, and the fuel levy is a tax, and there is nothing we can do about that”.  The point is, we don’t believe this about the fuel levy and SAA simply does not give a credible explanation for it.

You didn’t advise Voyager members about this H class for companion tickets.  I will look into it.  However, when you say it makes sense for business travellers because their companies pay for the tickets, are you implying that businessmen and -women can make their companies pay higher fares so that they can take their partners with them?  Do companies not care about the bottom line?  Or is your implication that the businessman or -woman should take a colleague as a companion and saving the company some money (if there really is a saving).  I am self employed and business class tickets are simply too expensive for me, so your argument about the companion ticket making sense for buying business class tickets really falls flat on its face, and shows, somewhat alarmingly, that your research into your premium credit card holders is very inaccurate.  I really don’t remember being asked for my opinion ever, despite having applied for my card on the day it was launched in 2006.

Talking about business class.  In order to upgrade to business class using my miles, I have to buy a more expensive ticket, yet you don’t guarantee availability for a business class ticket.  Who in his right mind will take such a gamble?  The result is, I buy the cheapest ticket and just slum it in economy class.  This must surely be what your intention is.  Voyager must know that people would rather buy a cheap economy class ticket without the right to upgrade than take a risk buying an expensive economy class ticket that comes with a faint hope of an upgrade.  That way you can still sell that business class seat for money.

As it is, I can assure you that none of my friends and colleagues who are voyager members fall for your explanations.  This leaves you with two options: either improve your explanations or offer a product that offers value for money.  Based upon the current view we have of Voyager and SAA, I cannot see you offering value for money any time soon, so,  on the issue of better explanations, don’t you think it would be so much better for your image if you simple come clean and say to all your valued customers: “look, times are tough, as you all know, we are also suffering, and we simply cannot afford to be as generous with our benefits as we used to, so we have to cut them, but please bear with us.”  You can be sure we would understand, even be sympathetic, and we will rally to your cause.  I may not be impressed with the way you treat me, but everybody is proud of our national carrier and would run to help it.  Just stop thinking we are fools that don’t see through your PR rabble.

Regarding my own situation, I will lose my Gold card at the end of this year because I am not going to pay the extra money for those higher classes just to keep the Gold card, and, with business being down, I won’t fly 100 000 real miles in a low class to be awarded 50000 miles to keep the Gold card.  I accept that, and for this reason and all of the above, I am now looking at your competitors (Star Alliance and non Star Alliance).  What I don’t accept however, is the explanations you give.  Coming clean, like I’ve suggested, might be a lot better for your image than sending PR responses, because right now, I think SAA and Voyager are not honest.

If you want to study an example of how effective yet simple and straightforward a frequent flyer programme can be, look at TAM Brazilian Airlines’ Fidelidade programme.

Finally, as you will notice below, I am an attorney, and have just studied the new Consumer Protection Act for an article in Business Day.  I seriously think that the way you implement the Voyager programme falls foul of section 35 of the act and, who knows, someone might just get irate enough to take SAA to task over it.  Maybe you should get some legal advice on the topic.

Kind regards

Emile Myburgh (TAM Fidelidade card no: 23478183)

I booked a flight from Heathrow to CapeTown in January (to travel in April). The return was meant to be from Jo’Burg to Heathrow. I paid for the ticket and then checked my email to make sure I got a confirmation. Silly me, I did not open up the email confirmation at the time to see what it said. I travel quite a lot and have never had need to open and check a booking, once made. Maybe that’s me just being naive….
Anyway, I just checked it yesterday since we are making bookings for internal flights, and to my horror I found that the dates were wrong AND that the return flight was also from Cape Town and not Jo’Burg.
How could this happen? I checked the website when I made the booking. My wife checked the booking. It was all in order!
I phoned the SAA Customer Care department and they told me that there was nothing they could do. I then asked to speak to a supervisor who said that the IT department would check their ‘logs’. She called slightly later and when asked, was very hazy on what their ‘logs’  had said. She said that as the ciustomer it was my duty to check the details before paying. I told her I had. This went on for some time – back and forth. Finally she said that they could not help and that I could pay to change dates, but that the airport could not be changed.
Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

PS. I think the only ‘logs’ that were checked were the type that float and then get flushed on a daily basis.

On 19th Jan 2009, I booked to fly JHB to Buenos Aires with the Voyager call centre. I was waitlisted to leave either the 16th or 18th Dec but was confirmed to return on 10th Jan 2010. I duly received emailed confirmation of the reservation. I called on the 2 Feb. to check if I had been confirmed yet for the outward journey and was advised the status had not changed.

I called today again to check, only to find that “the controller had cancelled the entire reservation” in the interim. Furthermore, that on the 3rd Feb I had actually been confirmed for a seat on the 16 December which should have been held for 14 days, according to the agent. However, she was at a loss to explain what had happened and said that I could not speak to the controller but rather had to send a message via her (which of course I did). It does not take a rocket scientist to work out that someone with friends in high places wanted, and got, my seat (I hope this person gets mugged in Buenos Aires).

I managed to reinstate the reservation as before but am now behind other people who have subsequently joined the waiting list in the meantime. I will of course send in the obligatory email to ‘Customer Care’ (which I regularly do as the responses make great dinner party stories) and for the sheer irritation factor involved, I will call & email Voyager every day until the reservation is finally confirmed.

There are two ways to deal with Voyager. The first is to get upset at the incredible inefficiency and lack of value that SAA calls a loyalty scheme. The other is to upset Voyager employees and make the division incur cost so as to rather upset SAA. I prefer the latter.

Regards,

Don Lindsay

Last year during June, I decided to go back to my home in JHB for the June holidays. I arrived at Cape Town International Airport a little bit late, but on time for check-in and boarding and when I got there, there was an extremely long queue. I thought that since my flight was about to depart in about 40 minutes. I went to the front counter and asked if I could check-in. The person at the counter told me not to worry and that they will announce a final boarding call, so I thought what the heck and I waited in the long queue. As the time drew closer and closer to my flight’s departure, I began to worry and so I went to the counter again. The person then told me that my flight has already stopped boarding and was about to depart.

 I was absolutely furious since they didn’t announce the final boarding call and I was listening to the announcements very closely. they told me they had made the announcement but I sure didn’t hear anything for SA324. They told me to go to the counter at the end and the lady there told me to upgrade my flight for R2000. I was absolutely SHOCKED as I was just a student and I didn’t carry R2000 on me and besides R2000 for just an upgrade for the next flight to JHB was way too much. I then called my father and he phoned SAA main call centre and he also told me to find the SAA supervisor for CPT. I found the supervisor and my father was complaining to her and asked her to help me as much as they can since I absolutely needed to get back to JHB on that day for appointments. The supervisor was not a very friendly person, not to mention she most probably had PMS that day, she was extremely impatient and she got sick of hearing my father asking her to help me and so she slammed my cellphone on the desk and broke it. The supervisor told me to go back to the counter, she said that they had another ticket for me at the counter but when I got there, I was confronted by 2 extremely extremely rude SAA check-in ladies, who called me a LIAR and used unprofessional words such as “eish” “boy, you are a liar” and “wena” and “don’t lie to me now”. They called me a LIAR many times that day and they wouldn’t even hear my side of the story, I mean they didn’t even let me speak for goodness sakes. The supervisor was a liar, she lured me to the counter by saying she had another ticket there for me. SAA didn’t pay for my broken phone, neither did they give me another ticket.

 They lied to me and used rude and unprofessional language at me. They called me a liar which made me furious. I had to call my friend to pick me up at the airport and I bought another ticket for the next day which was way cheaper than R2000. SAA tried to rip me off and they picked on me because I am a minority in this country and they saw an opportunity to make a fool of me. The worst part of the whole experience was the impatience, rudeness, inappropriate language and unprofessional service that is coming from SAA. They need more training if they are to be representing SA in the airline industry. SAA still has a long way to go if they want to provide excellent service, not to mention in time for the world cup.

Ok, I’ve cracked. Finally snapped.

It’s deeply personal now – I want to see the end of SAA. I want to see the airline collapse quicker than Nhlanhla Nene can fall off a chair on live TV. I want every employee who’s ever given bad service to ponder their actions while standing at a traffic light with a piece of cardboard. I want every good employee to depart the airline without delay and find a great job with a great employer. I want to see the board held accountable for their pathetic attempt at executive management. I want the 7 million taxpayers who have spent R5.7 billion on bailing out SAA revolt against this dysfunctional state owned entity (or at the very least be revolted!). (more…)

I would like to bring peoples attention to the fact that SAA is ripping people off with airport taxes. My personal opinion is that this is 2-fold:

1) It allows them to advertise seemingly competitive rates (but when you add the airport taxes they are WAY more epxensive than all of their competitors – how stupid do they think we as a public are?)

2) Due to the fact that so many people now have Voyager miles and are starting to ‘cash’ them in (Largely as a result of their own branded credit card which was launched just over 2 years ago). As a result, they are now having to find a way to backpeddle so that they don’t sink even further into the financial mire than they already are. (more…)

I am a platinum voyager member, which means I spend well over R250,000 pa with SAA. Usually I book through my travel agent, but when urgent trips come up after hours, I book online which I did late on Friday afternoon, a simple trip from Durban to Johannesburg on Monday 03/11.

Soon after booking online I received a sms from SAA informing me that credit card payment for Ref 46MSOY was unsuccessful, and that I must please contact SAA urgently on 0861 359 722 or +27 11 978-5313 , otherwise I cannot fly on Monday. (more…)

This contribution was sent in by Bradley Whittington and the original post can be found here.

SAA is a pile of pants. I urge you to travel using any one of the other domestic and international airlines.

Why is SAA crap? Well, here is a little saga: We (Mandy+I) bought two return tickets to Durban. We booked in advance so we got a very good rate. Only, by choosing the good rate (which was only R80 better than using another airline) we apparently signed away any consumer rights: (more…)

I submitted the attached document to SAA after an extremely disappointing experience while making use of their services or lack there of.

Their response was as follows: (more…)