How to, and how not to handle complaints
UNFORTUNATELY we don’t get it right all the time; the key is how we recover.” I couldn’t agree with Avis Budget Rent a Car SA’s chief executive Rainer Gottschick more.
As with people, companies ought to be judged not by their mistakes but by how they choose to deal with the consequences of their mistakes.
In Avis’s case, Margot Glyn had been charged a penalty of R300 for cancelling the Avis prepaid voucher she’d paid R416 for, despite the fact that she cancelled three days before the booked rental, and wanted to book a longer rental period with Avis for the following week.
I had suggested to Gottschick that to charge a standard cancellation fee of R300, regardless of the circumstances or value of the voucher, seemed unfair and, more importantly, not in keeping with the Consumer Protection Act, which allows consumers to cancel an advanced booking with the payment of a “reasonable” cancellation penalty.
“The R300 penalty seems to be totally disproportionate to the prejudice suffered by Avis, if any, given that this was not a last-minute cancellation,” I said.
Gottschick said Avis staff were trained and empowered to take the circumstances of each cancellation and the R300 fee was designed to protect the company against the worst-case cancellation: that of a longterm rental during a peak period.
“We do generally apply very lenient discretion on the cancellation fee. Unfortunately in Ms Glyn’s case, this was not applied.
“In this case, given that she effectively just postponed the rental by a week, we would normally waive the full cancellation fee.”
Glyn has since received that refund and an apology, and the Avis staffer she dealt with will be getting a training “refresher”.
And when it’s the travel company which “cancels” on the customer? What then?
Well, the customer doesn’t get to charge a penalty, alas, but they’re clearly entitled to a refund.
Last Monday yet another Skywise Airline flight failed to take off – this time a Cape Town to Jo’burg flight scheduled to take off at 8pm.
One affected passenger, Linda Peter, said there was no communication from South Africa’s newest low-cost carrier’s staff when the boarding time came and went, and bewildered passengers were only told at 10pm that the flight had been cancelled.
“We were left stranded at the airport with no alternative arrangements or accommodation,” she told In Your Corner.
“Someone managed to get hold of the CEO who, I am told, said that our options were to either go across to the City Lodge, pay for a night’s accommodation and claim a refund later, or find a spot on the floor of the airport and wait for the next day’s flight.”
Peter opted to sleep “rough” in the airport that night and buy a ticket with another airline for the next morning, being unwilling to risk being told of another Skywise cancellation.
Despite having called and e-mailed Skywise, she said she’d had no response regarding a refund.
I e-mailed Skywise’s media manager Martin Chemhere on Tuesday evening – about Peter’s case and the cancellation in general – and in response received a statement by Skywise Airline’s acting CEO Tabassum Qadir.
The airline’s fleet had not been withdrawn, as reported, she said. “We had a technical issue with an aircraft that led to a dispute with one of our lessors. We are in the process of signing a new lease on a replacement aircraft from another lessor.”
Astonishingly, nowhere in her statement, running to more than 1 000 words, did Qadir mention the cancelled flight of the night before, much less apologise for inconveniencing passengers or advise them on how to go about claiming refunds from the airline.
It took Chemhere two days to respond to my queries around this issue.
“We have started to refund all affected passengers,” he said. “Either a full refund for both ticket and accommodation cost or we are compensating them with vouchers or free air tickets.
“The latter option is much easier and they can e-mail us all their booking details: or call 086198-9895.”
Later he added: “Very important: Passengers who have taken Skywise’s R25 travel insurance get refunded on accommodation and car hire costs.”
Those, who like Peter, paid for their tickets with their credit cards, can also choose to apply for chargeback from the bank which issued their credit card. It’s a consumer protection provided by the credit card companies, which sees consumers being refunded if they can prove they didn’t get the goods or service they paid for with their credit cards.
Of course, that still leaves Peter out of pocket, given the Skywise ticket cost her R449, and she then had to pay another airline R898 to get to her destination.
Qadir ended her Tuesday night statement by saying: “We will continue flying our passengers.
“We want to serve them till the last breath of our life. Skywise is an emotional brand. We have hearts in Skywise. The red livery on the aircrafts is our blood!”
Serving your passengers begins with apologising profusely and quickly when you’ve let them down, badly; telling them exactly how to go about claiming refunds and then processing them as quickly as possible.
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