Kulula breaks contract

I bought a Samsung South Africa fridge a few months ago with a special that I will receive a voucher from the BuyAndGet department for any Comair (South Africa) flights to the amount of R4 000.

After a lot of issues with their department to obtain the voucher, due to Samsung store systems being offline on the day of purchase, I finally obtained my voucher code months later, but not without getting lawyers involved.

On Friday morning, 18 August 2017 I phoned Kulula bookings (as per the instructions) to book my flight. They answered with the words "Where are you phoning from?" and when I said "Cape Town" the response was a rude and unwelcome "No, where are you phoning from? This line is for corporate clients only".

I then explained that I got a voucher code that I received from Samsung and she rep**** saying that she will send an email to me shortly with instructions.

Over an hour later I received an email with instructions to fill in. I rep**** within a couple of minutes with all the requested information.

Over 3 hours later, I received the quote. I looked through it and rep**** that I accept the quote and they can go ahead and book it. This amount total was R3 521.96 which was within the voucher balance.

The weekend came and gone and so did the whole of Monday. On Monday 21 August at 16:38 (outside of their office hours) I received an email stating that they had to requote me as the fares had gone up. The new quote was R4 403.56, a whole R881.60 more. I checked the flight costs on the kulula.com website on Monday morning before the new quote and the total was R3 672.21 still at the time. When I received the quote I again checked the website and it was still at R3 672.21. Even today as I am writing this, the costs are R4 347.56, which is less than what I was quoted yesterday.

I responded telling them that I already accepted their quote. They only responded the following day. Their response was:

"Kindly note that our working hours as per the out of office that you received is from 08H00 to 16:30 weekdays. We do not work weekends and as my stated on my initial email sent to you the confirmation was required by 09h00 on the 19 August. Your response was received at 6:31 pm on the 18 August. Please see attached. My apologies if you feel any injustice was done. However we have to abide by the rules. Please advise on how you would like to proceed. I have cc’d my supervisor into the email if you have any further queries."

Firstly, my response was sent 3:41 pm and not 6:31 pm as stated above. Secondly, the response was before 19 August at 09h00 as mentioned above, and inside their office hours, despite me only receiving the quote hours after starting the process.

Another hour has passed and I have not heard back from them after replying that it is unacceptable and that my response was indeed within the timeframe.

It is evident that they are delaying things on purpose in order to increase their profit.