Europcar Sandton Eye - How integrity and transparence doesn't work

I am a loyal customer of Europcar and used them on many of my travels and work trips abroad. Unfortunately I am still in disbelief what happened at the Europcar Sandton Eye station.

After looking up the best rate and trying to book my car online I had to realize that I have to call the branch to make my booking. I wanted to have a letter to cross the border to Swaziland which I wasn't able to get online.

Unfortunately the branch couldn't help me either and advised me to call the general hotline. They didn't even know how much this letter will cost. So i called the general hotline. After talking to the europcar employee I got informed that this cross border letter costs more than 1000 Rand. I decided against it, but since I had the lady already on the line I told her, that in this case I can do the booking of the car right away with her. She agreed. After giving her all the info she needed and informing her clearly what class of car I want she informed me that the car is booked and I will recieve an email with the information. All I got was an email with the information of when to pick up and when to return the car. Nothing else. No info about rates.

At the branch itself (Sandton inside the Radisson Blue Hotel) I got rushed through the rental document as other customers where waiting.

I only realized how much I got cheated after I received the final invoice several days after returning the car.

1. Instead of giving me the rate of 220 rand a day (which I looked up online before), Europcar app**** a rate of 450 rand for exactly the same class of car.

2. Instead of having unlimited km as in the internet, I got a booking with max 200km a day. Honestly I haven't seen something like this before. In this case I can just get an Uber bringing me from A to B. Should be cheaper and more convenient. Unfortunately not only the lady on the phone, but also the employees in the branch forgot to mention this restrction to me.

3. A surcharge for the branch got app****. Again this didn't get mentioned to me at all.

In the end I ended up paying more than twice of what I should have paid.

After calling the customer service to find out whats wrong, I got a copy of the contract I got rushed through signing. There is no info of the daily rate on it at all. Just a field with "amount'. But this amount includes the deposit, too. So nobody would be able to tell how much it actually is. "Surcharge applies", "km applies" is writen in the tiniest letters you can imagine. Firstly I wouldn't even know what that means since nobody explained it, secondly I regard it as cheating not to mention that a single time. If Europcar urges its clients to hurry while signing the documents they should have the integrity to mention those points in the conversation.

Additionally, why was this info not already in the confirmation email I received after the phone call. By hidding this information and not informing the customer upfront, Europcar is taking the chance from the customer to change or cancel his booking. Obviously after taking all my luaggage to the branch I wouldn't have much of a chance to change my booking anyway, since it was already paid.

I would be happily continue using Europcar, but I am not willing to accept to be made a fool like this. I expect integrity and transparency.