****ming naive foreign guests

This is from someone I know who recently visited SA. They are gone now but I thought I would add their expereice with AVIS:

... attendant at car rental return looked at car for 2 seconds and told us the front left tyre was damaged, and that they would charge us a fortune. There was a small scratch that had almost certainly been there when we picked it up, but the guy then didn't note it, and we of course don't look for that sort of thing, when doing the inspection before collection. We asked him to be reasonable, that we come there every year, to which he asked for our name "oh yes I remember you" (of course he didn't). After we said that he changed his tone a bit and said he would mark the tyre damage as having been there before "I am saving you a lot of money" (this sentence repeated frequently, clearly trying for a major tip, which he never got). He spent so long that we nearly missed our flight, and because he had taken so long then said that we had passed the specified drop off time by 20 minutes so they would charge us for an extra day. Car hire is for 24 hour periods, and we collected the car at 5pm so they would certainly not have charged us an extra day. A blatant ***** trying to scare niaive tourists terrified of missing their flights to bribe him... Anyway, we have now received the final invoice after road tolls added, and nothing else was added to the bill. He didn't get his bribe. Sour ending to a great few days..

He was trying anything, like we filled the tank in White River, no we should have done it in Plaston, which is two minutes closer to the airport....! He also complained that the car was dirty, which it wasn't, name even cleaned the inside as well as the ****** marks outside. Didn't get his name, are a bit scared re the next time we hire a car in South Africa. Especially from Nelspruit airport, a couple of foreigners hiring a hire clearance vehicle are clearly tourists going into the park.

Shame on AVIS for doing this to our guests. If we treat them like this, they won't come here spending their foreign currency we so badly need.