Kulula – It’s getting harder to defend you…

I’m a fan of Kulula. The whole ‘no-fuss’ approach to travel is just what the average Joe Soap traveller needs and it suits me just fine. This approach hasn’t been welcomed by everyone, but I always defend it – saying how a free meal & coffee doesn’t justify an extra couple hundred bucks in ticket prices.

They recently rebranded and redesigned their website – albeit with a couple of errors (which still haven’t been fixed by the way…) and included a new travel section which I thought I’d give a try when booking my 1 year anniversary holiday. However what has been an epic fail on their website, is the fact that they promote “Holidays from R1895″ and by the time i reached the payment area (after choosing the most basic and default settings for every option), my package price was sitting at R8000…! WTF Kulula? Did you guys all fail maths?

Here’s the step by step of Kulula’s dodgy math skills:

Firstly, I choose my departure date & location:

Then I choose the package that had the advertised price (above)

So far, so good… But now all of a sudden, I’m told very vaguely that I need to pay in extra for some or other reason:

Total cost so far: R2391.

So already Kulula is failing… if the prices that you’re selling your travelling on, are already wrong by the 3rd step in the process, then surely you guys should update your prices? I mean for crying in a bucket, YOU’RE THE FLIGHT OPERATOR – YOU KNOW WHAT THE PRICES ARE… So update your travel prices accordingly! I mean geez, it’s not rocket science guys!

Ok… end of rant… Lets move on in the booking process, shall we?

Oh wait, kak… I have to pay another R394.00 for my return flight… (See above rant – same applies)

Now, I’m choosing a car:

I leave all the options here EXACTLY as is, for fear of doubling my ticket price again…

And holy @#^*! Look at this: ->

WTF??

Kulula -> Take Note Please!!
Tell me PLEASE!.. how do I get a holiday at the price that you’re advertising?? Tell me please how I can actually get a holiday that will cost R1877 per person! Explain that to me please and let all of us understand your dodgy maths skills…

I tried mailing my compliants to the Kulula Complaints department, but their canned responses didn’t help much:

ME: Hey guys. your travel special page show a kruger park special for 1864pp which includes flights, accommodatioin & transfers etc…. i choose this package, choose all the cheapest options and when i get to checkout, i’m shown a price of 8487… what the @#% guys?

KULULA: Hi Mark
The prices that is advertised on our website states that ‘price from’. The packages are built on standard prices and the more the flights get, then the flight fare supplement increases.

ME: I chose all the basic details and used all the standard information.. so how does the price “from” go all the way up to over 8000, when i chose all the default information?? please show me what options i must choose, to get a package that costs 1800. prove to me how this works.

KULULA: Thanks for your e-mail. Our packages are built on standard cars. The basic car which is a Golf with no radio and no aircon. You receive free 200km’s per day. You can upgrade your car at an extra cost.

ME: I chose the default car with no extra features or anything… so how does your package go from 1800 to 8000??? you still haven’t answered my question…

That’s the last I heard from them…

Please Kulula, help the South African blog community out here… explain to us all how your system works so that we know exactly why we’re phoning Flight Center and not using our favorite green airline.

SheBee

Yussie, I will seriously eat my hat if you actually *do* get a response out of this Mark.

I can’t believe how kalula has started screwing us over. In booking tickets a few weeks back, I was shocked to discover that the airport taxes cost more than the tickets themselves, yet no other airline had the same taxes.

Something fishy is going on, I can smell it.

SheBee

Awww cute, look at my little Bee! Hehe, you need a comment follow up plug-in Markymark.

Kulula

Kulula are not alone in overselling their specials. Hopefully this post will hit their radar screen. To me it’s (almost) all about price, and I was very impressed to see Kulula offering CPT – Lanseria flights for R659 (on Friday late afternoon!), I suspect that they are struggling to fill their increased frequencies and have brought the price down.

Kulula Flights

This is not something unique to kulula. Almost all airlines do this and most travel agencies.

MarkB

@Kulula Flights – doesn’t matter if Ghandi does it… still doesn’t make it right. It’s stll false advertising…

Ania Ewan

Hi Mark, my name is Ania Ewan and I work in the product department of kulula travel. I’m terribly sorry that you did not get a satisfactory response from our complaints department, the good news is that we all passed maths (it’s our systems that need extra lessons).

Thank you for brining this problem to our attention, we’ve picked up a bug in our system which does not permit you to book your holiday at the advertised price. If it’s not too late, we would love to book a memorable anniversary holiday for you and your wife.

Please feel free to contact me.