Appalling customer attitude by Avis

Below is a copy of an email I wrote to Avis regarding the bad experience we had with them, to which they have not bothered to reply. It speaks for itself. Rental Agreement or Reservation Number: 4 ********** -ZA-4 Surname on booking: SANDISON J.A. On 15th September 2017 I made a booking to hire a Hyundai I.10 between 8 - 11th December 2017 and paid the requested amount of R811.02 for the hire. I was sent a confirmation notice, a copy of which I have attached. On Thursday the 7th December 2017 I took the precaution of telephoning your offices to ascertain exactly what further amounts we would be expected to pay upon taking possession of the hired car and was informed that R2200.00 would be payable as a deposit. At the appointed date and time we presented ourselves at your Lanseria Airport Office to take possession of the vehicle as arranged only to be told that Avis was not prepared to hire us the reserved vehicle as we were holders of debit cards and not credit cards. As you can see from the attached confirmation nowhere does it mention anything about the unacceptability of debit cards, although my payment of 15th September 2017 was accepted without objection , refusal or refund. In spite of our pointing these facts out to your staff at the Lanseria office they were not empowered to offer us any solution to their problem and we were dumped without any vehicle with which to be able to get around for our planned weekend with all its commitments. Your staff were most unhelpful about their problem and merely repeated the status quo that debit cards were not accepted - and neither was cash which we offered to solve the impasse. It’s quite unacceptable that nowadays, Avis is unable to accept payment using legal tender which other hire companies are quite able to accommodate. The problem arises because Avis should never accept payment by debit card in the first place if it’s not able to accept the second payment of the deposit at the branch at pick-up time. Secondly, if Avis is not able to fulfil its obligations in terms of the car hire because of its own internal machinations, then it’s morally obliged to refund the money immediately and not withhold it for any further period of time which it does. As can be gathered from the above we were most dissatisfied with the intransigence and illogically unhelpful attitude taken by Avis, and because of their own antiquated but belligerent stance about debit cards we shall not be able to place our business with Avis in the future even if we wanted to. I think it’s about time that Avis changed their slogan “We Try Harder” because they clearly don’t.