Last week I made my last booking with SAA.

Ref: Booking Reference : 2VN2N8

1st Call: 23 October 8:30am

I called to query a flight rate available on line for a one way ticket for my daughter to fly to PE from Cape Town on 11 December as an unaccompanied minor. The rate went from over R1 000 online to a R524 telephonic quotation when I called. So I asked to book the flight on the phone. The gentleman was very helpful and we secured the booking, but he was unable to take payment. He told me to call back in 2 hours. I thought this was weak, given that I am a paying customer – why should I call back?

2nd Call: 23 October 11:19am

I called and was on hold for a ridiculously long time. Eventually I reached a consultant who I could barely hear. I quoted the reference number and made the payment with my credit card, which was a tedious process given that I could not hear her. Then she said I should call back to confirm that payment went through. I asked why I should phone back, when I had made a purchase with them, surely they should phone me? Apparently it doesn’t work that way.

Then I received an sms and an email addressed to my 11-year-old daughter (!) saying that the credit card payment was not successful and that I should contact the SAA help desk to avoid losing the booking.

3rd Call: 23 October 16:05pm

I called to query the authorisation, but the consultant couldn’t hear me. She put the phone down.

4th Call: 23 October 16:09pm

I called again, waited listening to some SAA promo’s and music for 6 minutes, then got another consultant, quoted the reference number, and was told that I couldn’t query the authorisation with them, but must phone my bank. Despite the email that I received saying that I should call the SAA help desk. I then phoned Nedbank card division, they said that they didn’t even receive a request for payment, so they never declined it in the first place. Perhaps the first consultant got my card details wrong?

5th Call: 23 October 16:19pm

I called SAA call centre, waited on hold for another long waste of time, 7 minutes to be exact, got through to a gentleman who re-entered my card details (and went through the lengthy process of confirming all the details that were already on the computer) and then re-tried my card. It was declined again, and no one can tell me why. If the Nedbank card division has confirmed that all is fine, I can only imagine that something is being done incorrectly on the SAA side. I have cancelled this booking, and will never book with SAA again.

I look forward to someone’s response on this, as a matter of urgency.

Kim Taylor

Tags: Booking, Call Center, Complaints, SAA, Ticketing, Tickets

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Complaints, Ticketing. 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.