No response to written complaint
 

1K Premier on United, flew SAA a few months ago. There were some major issues, including no workable headsets for the 18 hrs flight and FA flipping out and being verbally abusive. We emailed a complaint letter to SAA, but after the automatic acknowledgement (30 days for response, 60 if investigation required), have never received a reply. Nobody answers at the US customer service phone line.
Is there any other recourse, e.g. contacting StarAlliance or United, or filing a complaint with the FAA? Or do we just forget it? Sounds like SAA has more problems than dealing with one or two upset passengers.

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I asked for miles as compensation, and yes, an apology or some response to the FA's behavior.
I'm wondering whether complaining to Star Alliance (United) might have any effect.

To elaborate, while the incompatible headsets were just incompetence, the FAs behavior was completely unacceptable, going beyond rudeness and becoming verbally abusive.

So you have status with United, say SAA gives you some voyager miles, what would you do with them? It's unlikely they will be enough for anything useful...

Hello trvl4fun2,

Thank you for choosing South African Airways.

We're sorry to hear of the issues you encountered during your flight, and apologize for the delay in getting you a response. So that we can work to escalate this issue, may we ask that you email a copy of your original complaint (as well as the initial response) to [email protected], with a copy to [email protected]? We will ask our Customer Care team to look out for the correspondence.

Once again, please accept our sincere apologies for the delay.

Thank you.

South African Airways - North America.

I was expecting Mileage Plus miles.

I will see what SAA responds to my resubmission of the complaint.

I don't think it is a realistic expectation, but do report back if you get them.

Sad reality....SAA has given up on customer service. Put it simply...if you are lucky enough that the flight experience is going well, just enjoy it.

Just look at social media. SAA has stopped to answer complains where they are at fault. They have lost the first spot in Africa to Ethiopian. SAA customer service is just a disgrace....sad reality....

Auto reply to their email is "...experiencing high volume of queries..." and quotes anywhere from 5-10 days response time. If they fixed the product and service up front, they'd have less to deal with in the back end. :rolleyes:
But, this IS SAA, no no expectation of anything changing soon.

5-10 days is not unusual for any airline these days really...

18 hour flight?????

HELL of a headwind to or from New York/JNB......

You need to include the stop in Accra or Dakar

The New York flight is non-stop in both directions.

Flights were from/to IAD via Accra/Dakar respectively.
And to follow up: I got a reply but no UA FF miles, also no apologies to my travel companion, who was the one that was verbally abused and also had written a complaint. (Two females traveling, BTW,)

Sorry to hear about your experience. I may be a minority but I still fly SAA out of choice between London and Jo'burg.
Unfortunately mileage compensation is usually restricted to the airline's own mileage. United have only offered us their miles when we complained on two occasions, once about their inflight entertainment failing and the second and more annoying issue about the seat not reclining. I guess they may be part of the same alliance but their mileage is different currencies!