THEFT by TRAVELSTART

Travelstart has done nothing short of ***** my money and hide behind unanswered calls and emails and recorded voice messages at their Cape Town head office. These shameless despots booked me on an Sa Express return flight from Johannesburg ORTIA to Durban on 28/02/2020. To my absolute horror, when I arrived at the airport to check in, I discovered that there had been no such Flight SA1271 scheduled to leave for Durban at that time and every other flight to Durban was fully booked on that Friday. Travel start had made absolutely no effort to communicate this to me at any stage between finalising my booking and the day of my planned travel. I could not get a flight to Durban on any other airline that day. Every airline was fully booked. My entire trip was cancelled, needless to say that I forfeited the business for which I was traveling along with related costs such as accommodation and shuttle fees. I tried to ring Travelstart offices with no luck. I eventually gave up and returned to my home in Johannesburg. I continued to call them, still without luck. On 03/03/20 I wrote an email requesting the airline for a refund on the return ticket. One Penny Mafate from SA Express responded 3 days later authorising Travelstart to make the full refund, even issuing them with an authorisation number. A Zainab from Travelstart wrote me an email only on 14/03/20 that went nowhere slowly... basically he was blaming the airline for the delay. Upon further investigation, I was satisfied that they had all the necessary documentation to process the refund. They have simply chosen not to do it! Now they will not bother to respond to my emails and their office line has an automated voice response telling us the agents are working from home. I don't care. I even escalated the matter to the CEO of Travelstart Stephan Ekberg via email, to let him know how I am being treated ... he too doesn't seem to give a hoot because he has not bothered to respond either. All I want is for these ******* to refund me the R2507.00 they owe me!