Terrible Customer Service

To whom it may concern

I trust this email suites you well?

I write in with regards to a complaint as a first time flyer with your airline and I am totally gutted at the experience I had at OR Tambo on Saturday morning. My sister and I were set to travel to Durban with your 06H15(flight FA264) 2nd September to attend a family members funeral but that did not happen nor was this the last thing on our minds to experience after loosing a loved one. We arrived at the desk to check in at 05h32(taking note check in is 40min before departure) and was told by the desk attendant(black male) that we were late I did not take down his name and advised us to go speak to the controller and pointed towards her direction so we proceeded to her(she was in the far right corner of the check in cubicles chatting to 2 other staff and acted as if she was not the controller, when we asked if they could call the controller or the gate they said they were not allowed to and either way had no number or access to call them we then proceeded to the helpdesk whom I might add were also very reluctant to assist us in any matter,and they all kept saying there was nothing they could do!!!!!!! take note that by this time, time was slipping away and not against us resulting in us having to go book a flight with SAA and costing us R3322.00 that we did not budget for, and would like to be reimbursed

Your staff are very ill mannered and very reluctant to assist customers with the I don’t care attitude with no empathy or sympathy, they did not even offer an alternative solution and seemed more agitated that we were disturbing their conversations or their free time.

However we were not the only ones having the same experience there were 6 other people that “missed their flight” (who coincidently were also attending a funeral)with us and were given the cold shoulder so to speak as well, is this the manner to treat your customers, or the services you offer or train your staff to have? This has made me very very skeptical to use your airline again or refer anyone to use it however I did use it the next day to get back home to Johannesburg(flight FA269) as I had no choice as my ticket had been already booked and had to make sure I did not experience the same bad service as the day before and checked in nearly 2 hours before departure time and I have to give praise where its due I had a no problems and to the gentleman from Swissport who was very helpful as well(at King Shaka).

I would appreciate if you would look into this matter and give me feedback.