A letter for SAA

I sent this to SAA, in response to the difficulties I had (documented here)

" Hi there Helpdesk person"

If you don't think you can do anything about this, please send it to your
boss, it makes it easier to get to someone who can do something about this.
Someone who worries about numbers and income, and customer satisfaction.

I was wondering if you could give me a reason why I should continue giving
your company business.

I recently purchased four tickets from you, two for me, and two for my
partner. I have a voyager card, and I have my credit card linked to my
voyager account. I am what you would call a good customer.

Except, you don't treat me like a good customer.

My Pregnant partner (yes, we are going to become three customers soon
enough) decided to stay in durban for longer than we originally planned, to
spend time with her family. Usual circumstances. Now, we tried to change her
return leg to a more suitible date, only to be told we would have to
"upgrade" our ticket to something which cost a lot more than booking a new
ticket on your, or another airline. That doesnt seem right. It doesnt seem
right that my freedom is prohibited because you have made it absurdly
expensive to me enact changes on a service I have purchased from you. You
see, if it had been a reasonable penalty fee, even up to R200, I would have
happily paid it, since I would still get voyager miles, a free meal, and I
wouldn't have to take my business elsewhere, I like travelling SAA, you are
often quick and efficient.

So, it worked out cheaper to spend more money elsewhere, I hope you see the
irony here, you made it hard for me to spend more money on your business,
which normally is a business no-no. But I take the good with the bad, your
loss is my small gain.

Then I thought "Hey, maybe I can just cancel that Leg, and get some money
back", and you said "you can cancel it, but we will only give you the tax
back". That is 20% of the ticket's cost. You want me to pay a penalty of 80%
of the ticket cost, just to cancel it? Thats quite crazy. In fact, the tax
part of the ticket is not even yours in the first place, it is owned the SA
government, so actually you are not giving me back anything, you are letting
me cancel the ticket for 100% of it's cost. That isn't cancelling, thats
just informing you she isn't travelling.

So, then I thought, well, if they want to fill the seat on that date, and
they won't budge, perhaps they will let my friend travel with me (I get
lonely on these flights, and I have a hard time striking up conversation
with strangers). You told me you couldn't change the name on the ticket
because of company policy, because too many people were buying cheap tickets
and selling them to other people, and taking a bit off the top. Let us not
get into a discussion about capitalism, because I am happy you are making
effort to keep tickets cheap for me, if i buy direct (like the television
products). I am not happy that you enforce this policy in a way that
infringe on my rights as a consumer to act on services I purchase from you.
I am in the "IT" field, and it seems like a trivial problem to solve. If the
same person or company buys lots of tickets, and always changes who the
passenger is, you may have an abuser, and you can set a flag somewhere that
gets your customer services to phone them up and offer them "premium
services", or you could blacklist them from buying, or you could blacklist
their credit card, or, you could call them up when they purchase a few too
many tickets in one go. There are many things you could do, so that when
someone has a legitimate case to make a ticket change, you could accomodate
them.

So, I wonder if you could tell me why I should continue to use your airline.
The competition has clear, consumer empowering, policies on each of the
three avenues which you have closed to me. I don't see why I should pay an
annual fee to link my credit card to my voyager account, if you don't
recognise me as a customer who is keen to interact with you as a business. I
don't see why I should spend money with you if you make it a difficult
economic choice for me to continue being a customer.

Have a nice day, and I hope we can find some middle ground, or at least some
place where I am not compelled to tell people why I think they should be
flying the alternative.

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