I suppose that everyone has had baggage lost at some stage in their lives but this story is something for your website.

A few weeks ago I travelled to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Delhi and Mumbai all without incident – presumably because only one of the flights was with SAA!

On Tuesday last week I travelled from Johannesburg to Cape Town. Upon arrival in Cape Town, a number of passengers on my flight were told that their bags had not arrived. One by one, people were told that their bags were located across the world including New York and Dubai – how is it possible that bags at a domestic terminal find themselves on an international flight?? The mind boggles.

I arrived at 18h00 in the evening, only to be told that my bag could ‘unfortunately not be located’. I was then told that SAA would contact me before midnight to let me know if the bag was traced. I enquired as to what it is I was supposed to sleep in and wear to my meetings the next day and the response again was simply that nothing could be done until midnight.

At the same time, my husband who was in Johannesburg, drove to the airport and enquired from the desk in Johannesburg about the whereabouts of my luggage. The response that he received was that ‘the bag never left the conveyer belt but that it could not be located at this time’. Upon enquiry about what it is I was supposed to do for clothes and toiletries, the response was that an allowance could only be approved at 21h00 that evening.

At 20h00 that evening, I drove from Stellenbosch where I was staying to the Waterfront in Cape Town (as the only place with open stores) to purchase toiletries, pyjamas and clothing. It is not surprising that I received a response from the Jo’burg office advising me that I could spend R560 and that I could claim this back when I arrived in Jo’burg the next day (by the way, R560 does not even cover the cost of my make-up) and despite assurances from the Cape Town desk that I would receive a response by midnight, this was not forthcoming!

If that wasn’t enough, I received a call from the Jo’burg desk on Wednesday at 13h00 to let me know that my bag had been located in Jo’burg and would be waiting for me upon my arrival.

However, shortly before getting on the plane in Cape Town I received a call from the Cape Town desk advising that my bag was in Cape Town and that I needed to collect it. I then sarcastically enquired whether they were sure as I had been told that the bag was in Jo’burg and the response was “Madam, I’m looking at your bag, it is definitely in Cape Town”.

By this time I had already checked in for my 17h50 flight and had to get back out to the SAA baggage counter. After all of this, you can expect that I would not let my bag out of my sight. The crew however would not let me take the bag with me as it was ‘too big for hand luggage ‘ – I continued to refuse to let it go and was eventually allowed to take the bag with me.

Yes, it gets better: when I got to the baggage counter at SAA in Jo’burg to claim my R560 refund, I was told that the cashiers were closed and that they couldn’t pay me out immediately. I then wanted to leave my banking details to ensure that they would pay me but was told that I would need to come back to the airport to claim the money as they didn’t do electronic transfers and that if I did come back, it would have to be during office hours.

One expects that things like this happen. However, if the staff at SAA had dealt with the situation better or offered assistance instead of excuses, I wouldn’t be this upset. I am due to travel to Cape Town tomorrow and to South America in 3 weeks time – all on SAA – I shudder to think what may happen!

The fact that an hour of my time during the day to drive to the airport to collect R560 is worth much more to me then what is on offer is probably the main reason why I do not intend to claim the money back. However, I can definitely say that SAA may well have lost a customer. Was it worth R560? One wonders.

Zarina Kellerman

Tags: Complaints, SAA

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 1:11 pm 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.