False advertising

Subject: False Advertising Complaint

I am a student with a part-time job who saved up for months to finally go on holiday with my fiancé. When I booked two tickets for myself and my fiancé to fly from Johannesburg [JNB] to George [GRJ] I saw I could finally afford it. I used cheapflights.co.za then it directed me to Booking.com and I successfully bought two one-way tickets to my destination for ZAR1957,54, only for them to immediately refund my purchase and hike the prices up to an amount [ZAR5167,54] unaffordable to me then citing that the prices have increased on the airline’s side (SA Airlink). I repeated the process 12 times (see attached screenshots) but to no avail. This is blatant False Advertising and purposefully misleading! If it was an honest mistake, or after the first try the actual prices reflected upon trying to rebook, I would have understood, but this is absolutely unacceptable.

One of the 3rd party partners or the airline is liable for this mix-up and it is not my job to figure out who it is. So I am logging a formal complaint on all off these companies’ customer care channels, and also publicly posting it on social media, tagging the companies as well as individually on hellopeter.com until I get my tickets at either the price I was originally offered, or even better on a complementary basis for the emotional distress I was put through.

According to Section 29 and Section 41 of the Consumer Protection Act 71 of 2008 (“the CPA”), sellers are prohibited from making false adverti*****ts, which are aimed at misleading consumers to purchase the goods offered or enter into contracts which they would otherwise not have concluded.

I thus firmly believe that I have the right to bring this matter to light and demand that swift action be taken to rectify not only the deception these companies put me through but that the general public doesn’t fall for what seems like a ****.