Daily deals, bargains, reviews and advice on any consumer, technology and gaming related items available to South Africa.
Welcome to Hot SA Deals
If this is your first visit to www.hotSAdeals.co.za please browse freely and enjoy the deals. If you would like regular updates please follow the website by adding your email address to the "Subscribe via email" section in the righthand column or add "hotsadeals" to your facebook or twitter account.
If you would like me to post a deal that you found please email me on hotsadeals@gmail.com or click on "Report a Deal" in the right hand column.
The aim of this website is to report on any major discounts, coupons, fire sales and specials that will save you, the consumer, lots of money.
Wednesday 17 October 2012
DEALS: R500 Voucher towards your next International flight
Get R500 off you next booking of an International flight from Travelstart.
This voucher code is valid till Friday 19th Oct 2012.
Click on the image above to take avantage of this offer.
Hello Fayaaz, just note that by using Travelstart does not guarentee you the cheapest flight. So this R500 discount is a ploy. I did a test book from CT to London (return) from the 15 Dec to 22 Dec. Their cheapest ticket was R17440 on SAA. On SAA website the ticket for the same day was R8423. This should go under your "DEAL FAIL" section as well.
Thank you for sharing your concerns on this forum. I have double checked the available fares for Cape Town - London - Cape Town for the above dates. The current fare on Travelstart is R17,440 without the R 500 discount and the cheapest option on www.flysaa.com is R17,138. I noticed that SAA displays the price for the outbound and inbound flight separately and that the flight from Cape Town to London shows with R 8,720 for the more flexible fare while the cheapest option is offered at R 6010. The cheapest return option is currently priced with R 11,128. So for the entire journey the outbound and inbound options need to be added while on our website the full price is shown for the entire ticket.
You are welcome to contact me on email address feedback@travelstart.com with details on where you found the fare of R8,423 in case my suggestion above is not correct.
My previous statement still stands, please shop around before accepting vouchers or deals.
I checked all the costs again for the 15-22 Dec Cpt - Lon flights and found the following 3 prices:
- Kayak (flight aggregator)R15 893 (select to change currecy to rands)Don't look at first 2 cheap options as it directs you to FlySAA.com where the prices jump to R16333. Select the 3rd one from Orbitz. http://www.kayak.com/#/flights/CPT-LHR/2012-12-15/2012-12-22
We are an online travel agency offering the client a convenient way of finding the best flight deals for a specific itinerary at the time they are searching on a single page. While we try wherever possible to negotiate better rates with the airlines than they offer themselves, this is not always possible, particularly with dates like this where flights are expensive due to the lowest fares being sold already during the busy season.
I did a search on our website now and got the fare on SAA for ZAR 16336 compared to Orbitz USD 1845.20, which converts to ZAR 15 943. With the 500 Rand discount special, we actually beat Orbitz.
However, I don’t think that it should be about saving a few Rand here or there, especially when it comes to overseas bookings. We are a local company with our office in South Africa priding ourselves in excellent Customer Service. When booking with an overseas agent, customers would have to contact the travel agency overseas should they need after-sales assistance. If they wish to do so telephonically, it would not only be quite costly but they would also have to take overseas business hours into account, which is not necessarily suitable for us in South Africa. Moreover they only allow Credit Card Payments while we allow internet transfer for most of our flight options.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend and with kind regards, Barbara van Dyk Travelstart Head of Customer Service and Customer Relations
Forwarded the voucher to some family and know of at least 2 couples that are off to some far-off land because the voucher pushed the price lower than the other options out there.
After the R500-off hotel voucher http://www.hotsadeals.co.za/2012/04/deals-travelstart-r500-hotel-voucher.html I have also been using travelstart more and more. Not always the cheapest though.
So how about it Barbara, when can we expect more R500-off goodness thrown our way?
Hello Fayaaz, just note that by using Travelstart does not guarentee you the cheapest flight. So this R500 discount is a ploy. I did a test book from CT to London (return) from the 15 Dec to 22 Dec. Their cheapest ticket was R17440 on SAA. On SAA website the ticket for the same day was R8423. This should go under your "DEAL FAIL" section as well.
ReplyDeleteThat's correct. I should have stated that a comparative analysis should have to be done with flight prices before using the R500 voucher.
ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous and Fayaaz,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your concerns on this forum. I have double checked the available fares for Cape Town - London - Cape Town for the above dates. The current fare on Travelstart is R17,440 without the R 500 discount and the cheapest option on www.flysaa.com is R17,138.
I noticed that SAA displays the price for the outbound and inbound flight separately and that the flight from Cape Town to London shows with R 8,720 for the more flexible fare while the cheapest option is offered at R 6010. The cheapest return option is currently priced with R 11,128. So for the entire journey the outbound and inbound options need to be added while on our website the full price is shown for the entire ticket.
You are welcome to contact me on email address feedback@travelstart.com with details on where you found the fare of R8,423 in case my suggestion above is not correct.
Kind regards,
Nazley
Kudos on a supplier actually trying
ReplyDeleteNazley & Readers,
ReplyDeleteNazley, Thank you for the response.
My previous statement still stands, please shop around before accepting vouchers or deals.
I checked all the costs again for the 15-22 Dec Cpt - Lon flights and found the following 3 prices:
- Kayak (flight aggregator)R15 893 (select to change currecy to rands)Don't look at first 2 cheap options as it directs you to FlySAA.com where the prices jump to R16333. Select the 3rd one from Orbitz.
http://www.kayak.com/#/flights/CPT-LHR/2012-12-15/2012-12-22
- Travelstart R16 640
https://www.travelstart.co.za/cartItinerary.jsp?priceOrder=1&payTime=Post&affId=&cartId=11081328_15CD47&random=4869
- FlySAA R16 333
With Kayak you save over R500, and I have used them before extensively while travelling in the USA.
Maybe Nazley from Travelstart could assist in a price match.
Nazley, any comment?
Also please note that this flight is only so expensive because all the cheap flights on the 22nd December has been taken.
Dear Fayaaz,
ReplyDeleteWe are an online travel agency offering the client a convenient way of finding the best flight deals for a specific itinerary at the time they are searching on a single page. While we try wherever possible to negotiate better rates with the airlines than they offer themselves, this is not always possible, particularly with dates like this where flights are expensive due to the lowest fares being sold already during the busy season.
I did a search on our website now and got the fare on SAA for ZAR 16336 compared to Orbitz USD 1845.20, which converts to ZAR 15 943. With the 500 Rand discount special, we actually beat Orbitz.
However, I don’t think that it should be about saving a few Rand here or there, especially when it comes to overseas bookings. We are a local company with our office in South Africa priding ourselves in excellent Customer Service. When booking with an overseas agent, customers would have to contact the travel agency overseas should they need after-sales assistance. If they wish to do so telephonically, it would not only be quite costly but they would also have to take overseas business hours into account, which is not necessarily suitable for us in South Africa. Moreover they only allow Credit Card Payments while we allow internet transfer for most of our flight options.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend and with kind regards,
Barbara van Dyk
Travelstart
Head of Customer Service and Customer Relations
Forwarded the voucher to some family and know of at least 2 couples that are off to some far-off land because the voucher pushed the price lower than the other options out there.
ReplyDeleteAfter the R500-off hotel voucher http://www.hotsadeals.co.za/2012/04/deals-travelstart-r500-hotel-voucher.html I have also been using travelstart more and more. Not always the cheapest though.
So how about it Barbara, when can we expect more R500-off goodness thrown our way?