In recent times, students in higher education institutions have raised their expectations and are becoming less tolerant to poor service. The reality is that service failures are bound to happen. However, effective service recovery strategies could minimise the impact of service failure. The aim of this research was to analyse the influence of service recovery strategies on distributive justice in higher education institutions. A total of 430 students from three public universities in South Africa participated in this research as respondents. The research adopted a quantitative, descriptive and cross-sectional approach. The findings of this research showed that compensation and explanation have a positive and significant influence on distributive justice. Furthermore, the results showed a positive and insignificant influence of apology on distributive justice. The findings of this research are a wake up call to higher education institutions to focus on the two strategies of service recovery, namely explanation and compensation to achieve distributive justice. Thus, higher education institutions should firstly, focus on the use of an explanation to achieve distributive justice because it is offered at no cost compared to compensation which normally wears a financial face. This is based on the fact that higher education institutions are non profit making institutions such that they cannot afford to offer financial compensation on regular basis to address student problems. Ultimately, higher education institutions are advised to consider the severity of service failure before offering any form of service recovery to avoid double deviation.