SAA wake up!

Irritation washed over me as I read the automated response to my complaint to SAA. I wrote them a comprehensive and impressively rational letter regarding the appaling treatment I had received on my flight to London recently. It didn't take long for an "out of the office" response to jump into my inbox. SAA is out of the office? Surely not! Out of their minds maybe, but has the whole of SAA left?

Thankfully the email explains that it is an acknowledgement of receipt and not an out of office notice, and goes on to thank me for writing to them. Then it said something that completely shocked me: "We will investigate and revert to you shortly. This will take longer than normal due to the high volume of incoming correspondence."

Did they just openly admit that they receive lots of complaints? I mean, this is from the customer complaints department, so even though they politely use the word 'correspondence' they actually mean complaints.

It really isn't wise to notify customers that they are receiving a higher than average number of complaints. We are used to it from Telkom because we all know they don't care a damn, but from a company that faces stiff competition - scary!

What's worse is that it is a week since I sent through my letter and I still haven't heard anything else. Guess they're still pretty busy then!