I really feel reluctant to ever use SAA again, and this is why:

I was booked on a flight to London scheduled to depart on the 21st June, ref ZNKAKV.

Due to personal reasons I was forced to cancel my flight on the 9th June. I tried to do it online but found that I had to do it through the SAA call centre. I called, and after being on hold for a considerable amount of time, spoke to a representative. We went through the process of cancelling my ticket and requesting a refund. I was assured that the money would be refunded in 21 days. (BUT not all of it – SAA actually keeps my money – the only thing you get refunded is the tax, so basically SAA couldn’t care less)

A. THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED

B. WHY ON EARTH DOES IT TAKE 21 DAY TO REFUND MY MONEY? – I BELIEVE THIS IS A COMPLETE SCAM. It would be reasonable to expect my money refunded WITH INTEREST as SAA surely earn 21 days worth of interest on my money (I know it is tax but I doubt that it has already been paid over to SARS, and why can SAA not simply return my money and get it back from SARS themselves?).

Today I receive an email from the friend who had booked the flights for us saying that he has to date received no refund of my money. So I again have to go through the process of calling the SAA call centre – a waste of my time and money. I speak to a representative called Tsepho who tells me that in fact THE REFUND WAS NEVER PROCESSED AS ORIGINALLY REQUESTED. Lovely.

Now the SAA call centre DOES NOT generate a reference number (or call log number) for their calls so I have no way of referring back to the original call I made to cancel my ticket. I again asked for a reference number from Tsepho and she said they don’t keep them. What kind of call centre has no call log??? How do you guys track customer requests?

So now I am told I must wait a FURTHER 21 days!????? Through no fault of mine – actually directly through the fault of SAA and their poorly trained or negligent call centre staff – I have to wait again for this ridiculous time period.

I must say that the call centre agent I spoke to seemed completely disinterested in helping me out at all and generally seemed annoyed and impatient. I guess that working for SAA must be frustrating.

Anyway, please SAA can you sort this out and return my money within a reasonable time period – like a few days? I have already been waiting *42 DAYS*…..and I am really begining to get annoyed. Really this is not that difficult. It is not even that much money – I am owed a grand total of R3 184.00 which I am sure could be paid out of the office petty cash. Please make a plan as I am really bored of being taken advantage of. I think what I am asking is really reasonable…

I look forward to a response. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any more information to resolve this issue speedily.

Thanks,

Hannah

Tags: Complaints, SAA

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 9:26 am and is filed under Complaints. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.