Charged for no service!

I would like to formally express my profound dissatisfaction with the experience I encountered concerning a car rental booking made through the eBucks division, specifically relating to an interaction with AVIS, whereby I assisted a friend in booking a car. I did the transaction remotely via the FNB App.

Subsequent to securing the booking and receipt of the booking voucher, I was informed by an official from AVIS that I am required to be physically present at the AVIS branch so that the deposit could be debited from my credit card, which I had in my possession. This was unfortunately impossible due to my location as I was in Mpumalanga. Immediately after realising that it was impossible to proceed with the transaction as informed, I requested for a cancellation from the AVIS official. I was advised that I could only do it via the App. I proceeded to make the request but an official from the ebucks division indicated that it was only possible to effect a cancellation within 4 hours prior to the allocated time for collection of the car. This was not possible as the process did not provide me with allowance to do so.

The interval between booking the car and the request for cancellation from AVIS was only approximately 60mins.

This left me really frustrated because I am charged for a car that I did not collect under the circumstances and AVIS is well aware of this situation. My concern stems from the fact that I paid for a service that I did not receive, worse it appears that exercising the cancellation didn’t assist with anything in the end because I suffered a huge financial loss in the process. Please advise on a wayforward as I seek to recover my funds that I forfeited.

I contacted the ebucks division and their response was that