Poor Emirates Service

We never got an upgrade and NO REPLIES

Emblazoned across a full page advert of the Sunday Times Emirates advertised ... "Fly Emirates and get an upgrade" from economy to business class on a leg of the journey if booked by the 30^th November 2011. This prompted me to book a seat for a party of 4 of us to go skiing in Bulgaria in January 2012, having just returned from that trip.Despite the advert and the booking, I never heard from Emirates regarding the upgrade promised and so logged an online query on their website shortly before departing. NO REPLY. Further queries and NO REPLY. Contacting their local office I eventually was given an email address of their Customer Complaints department in Johannesburg... customeraffairs.jnb@emirates.com NO REPLY. 2^nd email NO REPLY.

I get to the check-in for our flight from Cape Town to Dubai on the 25^th January and was booked in to economy.. No one at the check-in had heard of the advert and said that sales department usually handle these promotions and check-in could not help. She gave me the email address of sales at Emirates.. anja.meadon@emirates.com whose reply was to the effect that "my hands are tied and I am unable to assist" as "this is a customer complaint and needs to be handled by that department".

What kind of a sales campaign is this and what kind of service or after-sales service is this?

As you will have guessed we continued on economy for the forward and return journeys and have never heard further from Emirates!!!

Is this really the way Emirates wants to do business in South Africa?

Here's the link to the Avcom Aviation forum posting on the matter which has had over 1000 readers viewing the complaint.