eBucks Travel: hidden costs you're not made aware of until it's too late

TL;DR (Too long; didn't read) version: I fell for the trap of a claimed 33.7% discount (R688 from a total of R2041) on flights purchased via eBucks Travel, when in reality only a 9.2% saving (R188) was achieved (total payable R2041-R688=R1353) in which a reduction of eB5000 from my eBucks account was made to make it appear as if I've saved a total of R688.

On the morning of Saturday 20 April 2019, I logged into the eBucks Travel website in order to purchase a return domestic flight from Cape Town to Durban as well as hire a car, seeing that as a level 5 eBucks client, I'd score a 40% discount on each. At the time I had a eBucks balance of eB8334. Going through trial runs of each purchase, I saw that I'd need eB5000 to qualify for the flight ticket discount, and eB3000 for the car hire. Each trial run indicated a slightly less than 40% saving, which I was going to be happy with. Or so I thought.

Firstly, regarding the flight ticket purchase, I must admit the following: after the fact, I realised that the originally claimed discount of 40% was only applicable to the base fare (as is the case with most other flight discount channels). I didn't read that part of the fine print beforehand, but nevertheless, I claim that this not a sufficient term and condition when this base fare isn't actually shown to the end-user at any point during the online purchase via the eBucks Travel website. The only thing that's shown are the totals for each leg of the flight (totalling R2041), and the total "saving" (R688). So then, what else could I, or should I have done at that point? That was the only information revealed to me. I was reasonably happy with this claimed "discount", which appears to be 688/2041x100 = 33.7%, right?

Secondly, the other issue I have here surrounds the other crucial term and condition: that regarding the "minimum of eB5000 payable towards domestic flights", also stated in the fine print under the subheading "Minimum eBucks required to qualify for a discount?". The question is: is it clear to everyone what this means? Given my prior experience with purchases via eBucks channels, a statement of the sort "minimum of eB5000 payable towards domestic flights" suggested to me that this amount would be deducted from my eBucks account as well as the equivalent value in Rand (i.e. R500) from the balance payable. However, hiding behind the claimed saving of R688 (from the total of R2041) shown on the eBucks Travel interface just before proceeding with the payment was the fact that eB5000 would be deducted from my eBucks account only, and not at all from the balance payable, implying a saving of only R688 - R500 = R188. That was totally unexpected, because again, no breakdown of this was clearly shown on the user interface (except that the balance would only reduce when "topping-up" the eBucks contribution to the ticket purchase - this was optional).

Now, to make matters even worse, the reason why I ended up with a grand total of eB4 in my account from an original total of eB8334 was because I topped-up my eBucks contribution by the maximum difference between that and the minimum of eB5000, i.e. eB3330, which reduced my total payable by R330. Note, also, that I still expected to have the eB5000 leftover as I planned to proceed to do a car hire booking which required a minimum of eB3000. Well, there went my grand plan.

So, as mentioned: in the end, only a saving of R688 - R500 = R188 was effectively achieved. If I had known or understood this correctly, I would not have bothered at all because I would have rather used that eB5000 towards airtime, data and other smaller purchases. How could they have claimed a saving of R688 when R500 of that comes from my eBucks account? So in essence, in order to save R688, I had to pay in eB5000 towards that discount and not the towards the balance payable. That's not what I understood would happen when making the purchase online, yet here we are, after having exchanges with both FNB and eBucks consultants who wouldn't (couldn't?) budge to reimburse me in any way, claiming that these are the rules and that they are there for everyone to see.

Note that my first query about this was to a consultant via the FNB App, immediately after my purchase. This person was not fruitful, as they pointed out that they could not access my eBucks information or help with such an issue. Given that I've been trying out Private Banking for several months, it only made sense that I see how helpful my private banker would be. He was honestly quite on the ball and got up to speed with understanding my story after a few explanations, however, he said that we'd have to wait until after the Easter Weekend. So on Tuesday, 23 April, I logged a complaint via email to my private banker as well as the eBucks department directly. A reference number for the case is ********** .

Lastly, I think I have just demonstrated that the two key rules mentioned here are utterly flawed and are therefore not relevant when used in an argument against one such as this, because the true nature of these rules are only made clear after the fact of purchasing, when it is too late and when nobody will budge when you have requested a refund. I have been conned by the FNB eBucks department, who blatantly misled me during the process of an online flight ticket purchase. Up until now (Friday 26 April 2019), nothing has been done to rectify the situation because, according to them, I don't understand the rules.