Poor service

The service received from Thrifty car rentals in OR Tambo airport has been an experience to forget.

We hired a vehicle from them on the 16th of Feb 2021 for 2 days & R4000.00 holding deposit was charged. We asked Tahir what the procedure is should we wish to extend the rental period. He advise we simply had to phone & advise we required an extension. We needed the rental to be extended so we called & the phone just simply rings without any answer. We called the head office in Kempton Park & they said it happens there are issues with the telephone lines we should call the number on the disc on the vehicles window. We tried to email the email address on the invoice & the email returned undelivered due to the account not existing.

We managed to email Tahir requesting the extension & he advised it's in order & the additional 2 day would cost R710.00. We assumed it would be deducted from the Deposit & was not informed it would be charged to our credit card.

After the 2 days we required the vehicle for another day & emailed Tahir again. We received no feedback from him. The following day we started receiving messages & calls that the vehicle should be taken to the nearest Thrifty branch & the vehicle is being flagged as not returned. Once again we tried to contact Thrifty OR Tambo via telephone without any success. We emailed Tahir again to inquire why this is the case when we requested an extension but have received no response from him again. The vehicle was returned on the 19th of February 2021 as indicated via email & extension request.

On the 22nd of February 2021 we booked another vehicle with them & paid R829.00. When we collected the vehicle Tahir advised that our account was limited due to non payment. I wanted to know how this was possible as they had our R4000.00 deposit & would have assumed it would be deducted from the amount & the balance repaid. He informed me that this is not how it works & they tried to collect the money from our account but the transaction failed due to no funds being available in the account...... The account is a business account & has funds so either the account number was entered incorrectly or someone did not submit the the transaction. They totally refused to accept there was an error from their side & refused to assist us any further. They also has no explanation why they accepted the R829.00 for the new booking & wasted our time to travel to OR Tambo to collect the vehicle.

Now they had R4000.00 holding deposit as well as the R829.00 for the new booking. They hold onto deposits etc. For 7-10 days before any refunds is made. The deposit was received back on the 02nd day Of March 2021. The amount received back was R2163.12.... If the R710 extension was deducted it means that they charged R1126.88 for the extra 1 day?

Needless to say Tahir was emailed again on the 12th of March 2021 asking for an explanation & statement of account to which we received no feedback. Thrifty also still has the R829.00 which has not been refunded to date for the rental they refused.

It is extremely frustrating to deal with Thrifty they will not listen to reason or accept that there is any error on their part.