British Airways and UK VISA

British Airways along with their VISA department "UK Visa Sandton South Africa" are playing a very dishonest & dangerous game. To apply for a UK Visa of any type, one is forced to firstly purchase an air ticket and only then apply for a Visa. I app**** for a simple Transit Visa at Heathrow from BA to Air Lingus and through to Ireland which was my final destination. After a SIX-WEEK wait, I was e-mailed a one-page letter telling me I had filled in the wrong application for a transit visa and it was rejected. Astoundingly, UK Visa do not allow any appeal, do not supply any contact info including a return e-mail address or phone number. I then went to their Sandton offices and asked their staff to help me find what I had filled in wrong so I could get it sorted and if it was my mistake, I will re-apply. Five staff members could NOT find an error, agreed that I had submitted the exact documents but surprisingly refused to fast-track fix it or help me. Their instructions were to tell me I have no recourse whatsoever, no rights to appeal at all and I must just re-apply. They did not seem to understand that any re-application would have looked exactly the same as the first one as they could not find any errors in my documentation. So, here's the game they playing - force the traveler to buy an air-ticket, get them to apply for a Visa, reject the Visa and make them re-submit at a cost of another 740 Rand (or much more if time was an issue), pay more for fast-tracking - as they sat on the initial application for six weeks - which meant I had no time to get a new application approved without fast-tracking & paying their fee to do it of close to 3000 Rand for the "privilege." I was forced to purchase a new ticket on another airline being Egypt-Air who do not require transit Visas when going via Cairo, but because it was so close to my departure date it cost 7 000 Rand more than my original booking with BA. So, with the original costs for my BA/UK Visa flight of 12 500 Rand plus the Air-Egypt cost of 17 000 Rand I have lost close to 20 000 Rand in the mess that UK Visa and BA created when they denied a correctly submitted Visa which only allowed for a maximum twenty-four-hour airport stay, whereby I was never going to enter their country ever, just walk from one carousel in Heathrow to another and leave for Ireland within four hours of landing. This is the game and looking at the absolute chaos BA is going through with 50 percent canceled flights a day for the last six weeks, not enough ground staff to handle the flights in and out, maybe this is a good way to take our money, refuse to allow us to actually fly to the UK, give us zero recourse to appeal or find out why they refusing these Visa's and ultimately not have to be concerned with one more person cluttering up their chaotic Heathrow system. I would like to let BA and UK Visa understand that this is just the first of many social media responses I will be making - I will stop when they refund every lost Rand and apologise for their inefficiency and disdain for their passengers who are supposedly being encouraged to fly to Britain and spend our hard-earned money on their tourism