No wonder you're going under

On 20/07/2019 I was denied boarding in Johannesburg due to SAA overbooking as usual. In "compensation" I was given a R5000.00 voucher to use within the next year. No further info or instructions given. Last week Wednesday 23/10/2019 I called SAA Australia to ask how I use the voucher in a new booking. After waiting 27 MINUTES for my call to be attended to a lady in Sydney named Bebetha explained that I have to make the booking telephonically as it cannot be entered online. She asked for the voucher and confirmed my details from her system, no other info was requested. Due to high call volumes she asked if I could book the flights online and select the pay later option to save her time and call back once that was complete. I explained that I did not have another 30 minutes to call again and sit on hold and she responded that there would be more staff the following day so it would be much quicker.

I booked our flights that night reference WXWBTJ, and found time to call back on Friday 25/10/2019. Roshee in Perth answered and I told her I wanted to complete my booking with this voucher, she then asked if I had my boarding pass from the overbooked flight 3 months ago to which I rep**** obviously no because I had not been told to keep it. She rep**** that it states on the voucher that I need to keep it, which after checking again IT DOES NOT! She then explained that I would therefore need to go into the SAA ticketing office in the Perth CBD to give her the voucher in person. I, obviously frustrated, emphasised that I had already been inconvenienced by SAA once and now again I was being given conflicting information as Bebetha had said NONE of this. Roshee - who did not apologise for this - said i had to go into the office. I fortunately had just finished work, my first early day in months which now needed to be spent going into the CBD where parking is a premium - again it is SAA's incompetence which has led to me incurring further costs and loss of much needed time off! On arrival I provide the voucher and reference number for my online booking to now be told by Roshee that I should not have been told to do the online booking as that is not how they do it - further evidence of incompetence or poor training of SAA staff? She would therefore need to call a supervisor for instructions - who of course was unavailable. She would therefore keep the voucher and call me on Monday to complete the booking. I asked for a copy of the voucher and after two attempts she kept cutting off the voucher so now the full voucher number cannot be seen on my copy. Hmmm. Also, would it have not been more logical to start a new booking with me present and cancel the online booking? Again NO apology was provided by Roshee for me being inconvenienced, or an explanation as to why her colleague Bebetha provided apparently incorrect information. I now await her call tomorrow where I'm sure I will be told that the 72 hour hold on my tickets has expired and she'll need to start a new booking - which we could have done on Friday! If there were any other reasonable travel options between Perth and Johannesburg I can assure you that very few would continue to fly SAA. Your monopoly of the route is the only reason you haven't gone under - yet. It really disgusts me that I could continue to receive such poor service from SAA, not only in South Africa but now in Australia too! It does pose the question though whether this is only *********** staff and systems or SAA's attempt to gather more income by offering vouchers as an apparent apology but then make them impossible to use so people give up and you save the voucher!!