Horrible Service By Ground Staff

<p>On my recent flight from OR Tambo to Cape Town International Airport, I was disgusted by the service I received during the check-in procedure. When we arrived at the airport at around 16:20, 2 hours early, we headed directly to the check-in counter. Travelling with two pieces of baggage I had done the necessary preparations beforehand and bought two pieces of luggage online. As we tried to check in the extremely rude and arrogant clerk told me that I cannot check in my bag without paying an additional overweight fee of R250.00 despite my combined weight being only 34kg, one piece 23kg and one piece 11kg. This was in accordance with their own policy that was taken from their website:</p> <p>“… If you are travelling with two pieces of checked luggage your total luggage allowance will be 40kg. You can split this up into a 32kg bag and an 8kg bag without penalty, but no one item may be more than 32kg.”</p> <p>After being cut of mid-sentence repeatedly by the clerk we politely asked to see his immediate supervisor. When we spoke to the supervisor, she told us that we would not be able to fly without either paying the overweight fee or leaving one of the pieces at the airport. As we tried to explain to her that they are contradicting their own policy we were repeatedly cut off again and told that we did not know what we were talking about and that we have to pay the overweight fee. At about this time the floor manager stepped in and as we were trying to explain what was happening to him, the supervisor kept interrupting us. As she left we could overhear her badmouthing us to other customers waiting in the queue, which in itself is completely unprofessional.</p> <p>After a long discussion at the check-in counter we were rudely told to move to the ticketing counter as to try and resolve the dispute there. After further discussions we asked again to see the floor-manager’s superior, but we were told that he was not available. As we were thus stuck with the manager we tried further to discuss the discrepancies in their policies where upon he decided to flatly ignore us, which is unprofessional and childish behaviour in all honesty. We then decided to call the FlySafair helpline to get further help. The manager, still ignoring us, did not reply on us asking his name, so my sister was forced to take a picture as proof of the ridiculous service we were receiving.</p> <p>At this point I was extremely irritated and nervous as the departure time was nearing, and decided I will pay the charges. When we were trying to pay the manager refused to take payment until my sister had deleted the photo of him, and questioned me on what was in my box. When I told him it was a TV FlySafair now suddenly follows an ACSA policy that no TV’s are allowed to be transported despite us having flown locally and internationally from OR Tambo several times with TV’s. When we told this to Sean whom was assisting us on the helpline he was confused as we weren’t supposed to have trouble transporting the TV.</p> <p>Again, another clerk decided to intervene and help us, where she then told us that I will be able to fly and check in provided my sister removes the photo from her phone, and also threatening to offload me if we did not comply, but that the TV will have to stay as they are not allowed to check it in. We again asked Sean about this and again he was confused. Eventually my “overweight” bag was checked in, but in order for me to get my boarding pass my sister’s right to privacy was trampled as the clerk insisted to go through private photo’s on her phone to ensure that the photo was deleted. After which she called a male assistant to “double check” that the photo was removed and again they went through personal photo’s.</p> <p>I did manage to get on my flight, and we managed to secure the photo on a Dropbox server as to keep the only evidence that we had on the manager that blatantly ignored us. All said and done I arrived in Cape Town Livid, my TV had to stay at family in Johannesburg and my sister’s right to privacy was trampled. As I have always liked FlySafair it is quite sad to have to say goodbye as they have lost a customer that has flown with them loyally for the past two and a half years, one of their apparent “valued” customers.</p>