Unauthorized debits from account and claiming damage to vehicle after vehicle was returned to them

Dear current and future customers of Avis Car Rental

I am writing this post to make you all aware of the extremely poor (and costly) experience I have had with this company and to warn you to not use this company for car rentals due to the poor and unprofessional way in which they conduct their business.

My fiance had surprised me with a trip to Umhlanga for my birthday and had booked flights to Durban and a rental car from Avis King Shaka International Airport. We had booked a vehicle between 07/10/2017 and 10/10/2017. On Tuesday 10/10/2017 we returned the vehicle at Avis King Shaka International Airport at their returns section. We were met by one of their staff members to check the vehicle and hand in the keys. I had asked the gentleman if there was anything we needed to sign and he said no, all we needed to do was hand in the keys and we are good to go. We then flew back to Johannesburg.

On Wednesday 11/10/2017, I received a call from an Msizi Gumede (Rental Sales Agent Terminations) who told me that there had been hail damage to the vehicle. I told him that we handed in the car with no damage and that we certainly did not drive through any hail. He then said he has photos of the vehicle and requires that I fill out a form. He sent me an email with the photos (without clear indications of any hail damage, nor any timestamps of when these photos were taken) and with a damage incident report form. I rep**** to the email indicating that I am not happy to fill out a damage report form as I did not hand in the vehicle with any damage. I requested that they review the CCTV footage to confirm that I had spoken to their staff member at the returns and that it would also confirm that there was no hail damage on the vehicle at the time of return.

Since then I have received no response from Avis in regards to this and to top it all off on Saturday 14/10/2017 at 09:04am, they did an unauthorized deduction of R1847.72 off of my credit card. This deduction was taken off my account without any prior notice from Avis as to what this amount was for, or any notifications that they would be doing any deductions. There was no phone call, email, sms or any other form of notification that they would be making a deduction off of my account. To make it worse, their call centre does not operate on weekends for me to query what this deduction was for, or to dispute this. On top of this, they are still holding onto the deposit of R1988.94 which I paid on 07/1/2017. So I have now paid R3836.66 for something that did not happen during the time that I had the car in my possession!

This is absolutely unacceptable and ********* conduct from this company. I have used other rental companies in the past and I have never had an experience like this before. So my recommendation to everyone is to rather use another car rental service if you want to avoid the pain of dealing with a company who prefers to:

1. Falsy accuse customers of damaging their vehicles, after being checked by their staff upon return. 2. Deduct money off of your account without notifying you prior to doing so. 3. Not respond to your emails or to do any internal investigations prior to, or after accusing you of damaging their vehicles.

See attached image of "hail damage"