Utterly poor customer service (Discovery)
As a loyal Discovery client with a substantive portfolio of investments with Discovery, I am utterly disappointed at the poor customer service from Discovery Vitality (Travel department) with regard to expediting a travel booking for my daughter. On the 20th of May, after calling with my financial advisor (using his Discovery Sandton, office line), we got through to a Discovery agent (@around 16h50) who answered the call but after the call got dropped, didn’t call back to assist. After calling several customer care agents, each with discrepant messages and feedback, I am still struggling to get the required assistance. Both my wife and I hold discovery vitality accounts (with a sizeable investment portfolio) and are appalled at the hoops one has to jump to get the assistance needed (as paying clients).
The T’s and C’s make it an absolute nightmare to navigate through with unreasonable expectations and technical stipulations such as : -An adult on Discovery who is accompanying a child but booked a ticket through utilising Frequent Flyer, Emirate or Voyager miles can’t book a ticket using their Discovery vitality benefit (even though the minor is essentially being accompanied by the parent). -This seems to be a purely financial benefit to the company clause, which doesn’t consider the best interest / financial status of the parent (who opts for a single ticket booking using their discovery vitality benefit). -What about other considerations (which have been marginalised by Discovery vitality), such as the parent ticket being sponsored or paid for by their employer (and the discovery member choosing to expedite a paid ticket for their child, using their discovery vitality status). I sought assistance from my financial advisor- Jordan Juistine (who is also a Discovery employee) to call a Discovery Vitality operational manager (Ashika) and explained the situation with me on the line. He also verified the poor service that he conjunctly experienced in assisting me in trying to get assistance from Discovery Vitality Travel.
Nonetheless, despite the aforementioned ordeal, in the said call with the Vitality Travel manager, the financial advisor reiterated that he witnessed the inefficient and frustrating customer service from the travel department which caused me to delay my airline ticket bookings to Paris and Zurich (December 2025). As a result of the delays and inefficiency of the Discovery Vitality travel department, the prices of the tickets increased by R2000 (which further caused me loss of revenue and inconvenience).
NB. I have attached a screenshot of the original flight ticket pricing when we called Vitality Travel for assistance and shared this information with the financial advisor from Discovery (Jordan) who promised to also escalate this matter to you from his side. As per the verbal feedback from the Vitality Travel operational manager (Ashika), I am kindly requesting that the additional cost incurred by me (due to the staff’s inefficiency) be processed as reimbur*****t.