Shocking treatment that you pay for

Before I came to South Africa for a visit, I renewed my visa and received a document proving that I renewed my visa. Korean Immigration also assured me that my visa will reflect on the system, and I do not need any further documents than the one I had.

So on the day of going back to Korea, we checked-in and the person helping us confirmed our Q-CODE and negative PCR and finished checking us in. No problems with documentation.

We went through South African Customs, and they had no problems either.

We then went to the boarding gate where a Securitas lady paged through my passport and seemed to not be happy with my explanation concerning my visa, she continued then to ask another lady at the boarding gate whether she knew about my documents, to which she rep**** "Angazi" (I don't know). This Securitas lady then took us to the Emirates employee and asked her about the document. The female emirates employee gave one look at the document, listened to me for a few seconds and then rep**** that the document says "Application" and that is not good enough. I told her that neither my girlfriend nor I have cell phone coverage and one call would clear this up. She rep**** she can't help me and then turned around and ordered our bags off the airplane. Then one of the counter employees continued to get in my girlfriend's personal space and demand an answer to whether she will stay with me or get on the plane. They did not give her time to think, they just stood in her face and got impatient that she took a moment to decide.

After we were escorted back to the terminal, we searched for an emirates office to clear this up. We found one on the third floor and a male emirates employee helped us. We explained the whole situation to the man in the office, and he then sent an email to Korean immigration and called the station chief. Both the email and the call confirmed that if the system allowed me to check in then I am allowed to fly. On top of that the male emirates employee told us that the female emirates employee had listed us as 'no show' passengers.

So, in summary: The lady at the check-in counter never reported any problems with my documents. The female emirates employee did not want to help, she just wanted to get things done. Even after explaining that the problem could be easily solved with a phone call, the female emirates employee continued to order our bags off the airplane. The female emirates employee did not call the office where the male emirates employee worked, to try and clear up the problem. The female emirates employee did not call the Korean office to sort it out. The female emirates employee did not report the incident to the office afterwards. The female emirates employee reported us as 'no show' passengers.

The arrogance and nonchalance and non-care was shocking and absolutely disrespectful. On top of that embarrassing me and my girlfriend in front of everybody and then refusing to help is not what I expect from a top dollar airline.