Money spent on a voucher that cannot be redeemed.

I am writing to formally lodge a serious complaint regarding a R500 birthday voucher purchased by my parents in July as a gift for my boyfriend — a dedicated KFC fan. Unfortunately, this experience has turned out to be extremely frustrating, unresolved, and disappointing.

Upon visiting a KFC store to redeem the voucher, we were informed that it could only be used via the KFC app — which was not communicated at the time of purchase. My boyfriend then entered the voucher code into the app to verify its validity, without placing an order. Shockingly, the app immediately activated the voucher despite no transaction being completed. No order was placed or confirmed, and no food was received.

We exited the app assuming activation would only occur upon checkout — clearly a reasonable expectation. But when we returned to try again, the voucher was marked as “used.”

We have called your customer support line three times. Initially, we were told the issue would be escalated and a new voucher would be sent. That did not happen. We then received a replacement voucher which also did not work — and were later told it had been redeemed in Germiston, even though we live in Pretoria and have never used the voucher there.

This situation is unacceptable. A R500 voucher was paid for in good faith. It was neither used by us nor provided any value, and we are left with no resolution. To make matters worse, I have read multiple complaints from other customers experiencing the same issue, suggesting that this is a known problem with your voucher system — one that wrongly activates codes without a completed purchase and offers no recourse for affected customers.

We demand the following:

Either the immediate re-issue of a working R500 voucher OR

A full refund of the original R500 voucher purchase

We have now been trying to resolve this for weeks with no proper assistance. It’s unacceptable for a brand like KFC — which claims to value customer satisfaction — to take money without providing service and to ignore repeated attempts to resolve a legitimate complaint.

Please resolve this matter urgently. I expect a response within 3 business days.