Money down the drain

I made bookings with GOTOGATE for 3 of my colleagues, schedule to leave SA for Namibia on the 4th of March 2019 with the 06:40 flight SW722 for a 10H00 meeting.

The flight was delayed with 4hours, I then contacted GOTOGATE to find out if they can reserve the 3 tickets since there was a 4 hour delay that impacted to my colleagues not being able to attending a meeting @ 10H00 in Namibia. I was told by GOTOGATE that they cannot reserve the ticket, meaning the money went down the drain. I then enquired if a refund was possible for the 3 tickets that costed R5521 per person and YES but there was a handling fee of R1000.00 and airline cancellation fee of R 1410.00. I find it a bit unfair though, I know problems do happen which are beyond ones control but at the least they could have made exceptions because more costs were incurred to get a flight to return back to SA earlier then the initial time as it was pointless now to travel.

I strongly believe that these Agencies and Airlines need to implement policies for such instances when flights get delayed for more than 2 hours at the least.