How to peel a Mango

I have just returned from a weekend in Stellenbosch that consisted of exquisite dinners, even better wine tasting, a beautiful wedding on the Saturday night, and one of the most entertaining phone calls I've had since Thursday. I couldn't believe it, back-to-back amazing phone calls. What did I do to be this lucky?

Weddings are always great fun, and it was with excitement that, a few weeks ago, I booked 2 flights to Cape Town on Mango to attend a close friends nuptuals. In all the excitement I mistakenly booked the Joburg to CT leg for Friday morning instead of Saturday morning as had been planned. When my better half realised my mistake I quickly phoned Mango to find out if we could change the flights, and much to my dismay, Mango wanted to charge me R500.00 per ticket to make the change. The option of taking the Friday off work and keeping the R1000.00 as spending money was more enticing than changing the flights so we stuck with our original Friday morning flights.

On Friday morning, as we were packing the last bits of luggage I got a call from a lady at Mango and the brief conversation went like this:

Mango: Good morning Mr Crusoe, you have 2 tickets booked to fly back to Joburg on Sunday at 1:30pm
Me: Yes that is correct
Mango: That flight is really overbooked and I wondered if you would mind flying back on the 10:30am flight instead of the 1:30pm flight?
Me: Yes we can do that if you want – it will cost you a R1000.00 for each of us
Mango: Excuse me...
Me: If you pay us a R1000.00 each then we will be happy to take the earlier flight
Mango: I'm sorry, we can't pay you to change flights
Me: I wanted to change our outbound flights and you wanted to charge me, so why can't I charge you?
Mango: Sorry we can't pay you a R1000.00 each
Me: Well I guess we'll stick with our 1:00pm flights then
Mango: Fine
Me: If you get your managing director to phone and ask me then I'll re-consider
Mango: Thanks for your time
Me: No, thank you!

I was grinning from ear to ear for hours after that call. Mostly because it isn't often that the tables get turned and you can use a companies system against them. I truly hope this lady reports the call to her boss but something makes me seriously doubt she will care enough to bother. Pity, it would have been another fun conversation.