It’s a promise so bold, it’s bound to attract attention – and custom. “We’ll beat any airline quote or you fly for free!”
That’s been Flight Centre South Africa’s claim, in various forms, for some time, and it’s seen them being called to answer several claims of misleading advertising, laid with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) by consumers who’ve believed that they did indeed find a cheaper quote for the same flight, but didn’t get to fly free.
Most recently, in late January, the ASA’s Directorate found Flight Centre SA in breach of a 2010 ruling ordering the company not to use the claim: “We will beat any airline or web airfare quote or you fly for free!”
The claim was found to be misleading as the terms and conditions revealed that this only applied to SA registered businesses and websites.
Then, late last year, a Mr T Jacobs told the ASA that Flight Centre could not beat the quote he submitted, and did not honour their “fly free” guarantee, and thus the ASA should enforce its previous ruling.
Flight Centre argued that their promise had been amended since the previous ruling, to state: “Lowest airfare guarantee. We will beat airfare quotes for available flights departing from South Africa or you fly free”.
But the Directorate had a different view.
“(Flight Centre) has merely again shifted the goalposts by omitting another material fact from its broad and largely unqualified claim,” it said.
It found the travel company in breach of the earlier ruling.
Flight Centre’s latest claim goes like this: “Lowest Airfare Guarantee. We will beat same day airfare quotes for available flights departing from South Africa or you fly free.”
It goes on to say that if a consumer finds a cheaper airfare it will beat it by R20 discount on a domestic flight and R50 on an international one, plus give them a R100 voucher for a future travel booking with Flight Centre.
In the past, I’ve asked Flight Centre if anyone had actually ever got a free flight as a result of this promise. Yes, I was told.
When pressed for details, I was told the ASA had been given the details.
Well, I’m happy to report that someone – a party of five, in fact – has got free flights.
Last December, pensioner Tony Bagnall wrote to me to complain that Flight Centre’s Grenstone Mall branch in Edenvale hadn’t honoured its “We will beat airfare quotes for available flights departing from South Africa or you fly free” promise in his case.
He said he’d been quoted “a steal of a deal” for four adults and a child, flying to London in January this year, and returning in February. The price was R33 955.
He then decided to put Flight Centre’s promise to the test and found the same flights offered on Emirates’ website for a total of R27 855, “fully inclusive, apples for apples”.
“However, far from honouring their guaranteed R50 reduction with a R100 travel voucher, they demanded an additional R250 per person service charge to book the flights,” he said.
“By the time we got the final details by e-mail, their office had closed so we were not in a position to raise a query that same day.
“Instead, we went to the Emirates site, booked on line and saved the money.”
Bagnall lodged a complaint with the ASA, and I asked him to keep me posted. Which he did – last week he e-mailed me to say that last month he’d been contacted by a Flight Centre executive, who’d said the company had been contacted by the ASA, and had investigated his complaint as a result.
In doing so, they’d noted some discrepancies, and as result, the company would honour its “fly for free” promise and he’d be refunded the cost of his Emirates flights – R27 885 – as a “gesture of goodwill”.
“I was completely gobsmacked,” Bagnall told me.
Ironically, he was in the UK, on that trip, when he got the news.
And the money has since been refunded, to the last cent.
“For us, being retired, this is a very substantial amount of money.
“I have written to ASA to thank them for their intervention, commend them on their diligence and let them know that Flight Centre eventually honoured their advertised guarantee.
“I must also thank you since it was some of your articles that prompted me to fight back.”
Given this outcome, the ASA will not be holding a hearing about this case.
Naturally, I asked Flight Centre SA to comment on the Bagnall case.
Responding, the company’s general manager for product, Liane Cowan, said she and a colleague had investigated Bagnall’s case.
“Once it was identified as a Fly For Free case Mr Bagnall was reimbursed in line with the terms and conditions of the guarantee in our advertising,” she said.
So why hadn’t this happened at the time?
“In the original investigation a critical step was missed,” she said.
“Mr Bagnall’s case should have been escalated to our management team as per the terms and conditions of the Lowest Airfare Guarantee.
“Had this taken place, we would have immediately addressed the issue and Mr Bagnall would have had the guarantee honoured.”
She quoted from the company’s website, which invites customers to call the company’s general manager for retail stores, and supplies her cellphone number for this purpose, should they be dissatisfied with their service.
She said Flight Centre’s “fly for free” promise had not been scrapped.
“It was removed temporarily due to a pending case with the ASA, but it is now back in circulation with an amendment,” she said.
But it’s not nearly as prominent as before.
“At Flight Centre SA, we work closely with our clients and the ASA to ensure that we do live up to, and honour our advertising,” Cowan said.
“Every month we beat, on average, 1 800 quotes.” - Pretoria News