WENDY KNOWLER

From ‘take it or leave it’ to ‘sorry for the inconvenience’

The real test of any relationship happens when things go wrong. I look at those social media posts of people posing with their shiny new ribbonwrapped cars, clutching flowers or bubbly and gushing “great service!”, and I think: “Let’s see how great the service is when the car develops a fault three months later and they can’t find an easy fix.”

A quarter of a century of consumer journalism will do that to you.

When everything’s sweet, there’s no way to gauge whether a company will live up to its lofty mission statements. That becomes apparent only when things turn sour. Problems and mistakes are not the issue; these are inevitable, of course. It’s how companies choose to respond to them that reveals the extent of their commitment to their customers.

I believe corporates want to treat their customers well, but in too many cases they fail to invest sufficiently in creating ways for justifiably disgruntled customers to get what they’re entitled to. It’s far more appealing to focus on marketing initiatives instead.

Hence, thousands get stuck at customer consultant level, with zero chance of interacting with a higher-up who has both the will and the power to do the right thing. And that’s why their stories end up on social media, with ombuds’ offices and in journalists’ inboxes.

Consumers often spend weeks or months fighting for a refund or a contract cancellation, being repeatedly refused, fobbed off or ignored, and when I take up their case with the company, I get a swift response and resolution, with versions of “We’ve now done right by our customer; sorry for the inconvenience”.

By the time I spotted Durban-based chef Shaun Smith’s e-mail in my inbox, he had given up trying to get what he and his wife were due from online travel agency Travelstart — the benefit of an airfare credit of about R20,000.

But I felt his case was worth pursuing nevertheless.

Here’s what happened …

Last year, Smith and his wife had booked to fly to Mexico with United Airlines but were forced to cancel. “I did the cancellation on my United Airlines app which clearly granted us R19,310 credit each, valid for travel until December 31 2023,” he said.

“But for the past six weeks I have been battling to get Travelstart to book new tickets for us and use the credit we have for the dates we wanted to the US.

“They insisted that the tickets were valid only until May 23, that we could not change our outbound cities, and that we could use the credit for internal US flights only — all clearly against what was on my United Airlines app and on the airline’s website,” Smith said.

He contacted the airline directly for a quote for the couple’s desired flights, but there was a problem.

“Travelstart South Africa had not captured both the tickets in the required United Airlines format, so they could only apply for one credit, and they could not take over the tickets and assist us.”

So back to Travelstart he went.

“They still kept telling me the credits were only valid until May, despite me repeatedly urging them to communicate with United.

“This back and forth, repeated daily, each time with a new agent responding no-one ever seemed to read the notes or previous message history and they just kept firing back the same standard replies.”

(I’ve heard this countless times about customer “support” platforms across the board.)

More than 30 e-mails later, Smith said, he won the credit validity battle and finally got a quote to book his flights, requiring the couple to pay in R48,600, because only one of their two R19,300 credits had been applied.

“I got a ‘take it or leave it’ type e-mail back, saying the system generates the quote, when a call to United yielded the exact same fare less that second R19,300 credit, but we cannot book those tickets because Travelstart South Africa did not capture the ticket in the United format required to enable them to take it over.

“United said we should ask Travelstart to correct their error so we could benefit from the full credit amount,” Smith said.

But he just wasn’t winning with that. Worn out from the long battle and afraid the price of the tickets would increase if he delayed any longer, Smith told Travelstart he “begrudgingly” accepted the quote.

In my e-mail to Travelstart, I suggested that Smith had needed access to a higherup who was willing to look at the issue, examine what was reflecting on United’s site and take responsibility for the incorrect capture. But that was denied to him.

“Is Travelstart willing to have a proper look at this case in the interests of justice? On his version, he’s due a refund of about R19,300.”

The travel agency’s legal counsel, Anthony Streak, responded: “Thank you for raising this with us.

“We have looked into this matter, and wish to apologise for any inconvenience caused to the passenger.

“We will refund him an amount of R20,308.”

One e-mail. Just like that. And about R1,000 more than Smith thought he was entitled to.

It was a lovely, unexpected windfall for Smith, but he should have been given the benefit of that money months ago.

“In addition to the above,” Streak said, “we are also reviewing our processes to ensure that these queries are brought to our attention sooner in order to save on frustration.”

That would be first class.