Do yourself a favour and use any other car hire company

On Wednesday 22/03, we booked a car with Avis for collection on 25/03. On the website, it indicated that we could either pay on the website or pay at the counter at OR Tambo and we opted for the latter. On 25/03, we arrived at the airport and were told that our car reservation was cancelled. We had no prior notice of this at all and we had a trip to make that morning. When we asked why they cancelled our trip without informing us they were not sure and said we must have cancelled the reservation on our side which we definitely did not do. They said the car we reserved was probably no longer available but the car was still available on the website. Because we’d travelled all the way from Cape Town, we tried the Isando branch and we were informed that the OR Tambo branch believed us to be lying about the cause of the cancellation and that they were not going to allow us to book a car again. We literally did wrong nothing here and it was now close to mid day and we were being made to feel like we were dishonest. We provided the identity documents required and were prepared to pay the required holding fees. As a last resort we booked the car again online and paid online to avoid the cancellation again and we got a confirmation of booking and checked in digitally. On the website, it indicated that we could get the car on or around midday and so we went back to OR Tambo and we’re told that all was now in order and that they would get a car for us. The keys were literally in our hands when they turnt around to now say they could only give us the car at 15:00. So I traveled from Cape Town to make an important family trip and couldn’t take the trip in the end because of you guys. 4 hours of going up and down only for the keys to be taken from us. And to add icing on the cake, when you took the keys from us and we had to cancel the booking, you told us that you’d be charging us a cancellation fee?! I just don’t know how a company your size can be so inefficient and then want to penalise customers who cancel, not by choice, but due to frustration. Please refund me the full amount. The cancellation fee is not a large amount but you’re not entitled to it because your gross negligence was the direct cause of us cancelling. You shouldn’t be rewarded for your negligence. I am actually prepared to go to whatever lengths to ensure that no one else is put through what I went through.