Please, please be careful of this place!

We hired a car from Woodford from 11:50am on Saturday 27 November. Collected from OR Tambo undercover car parking, Zeyn did a check of the car and found a dent on the left door, which he marked on the sheet. We drove 180km to a friends house, parked undercover for the evening, at 09:30am the next morning, drove the car out of the garage and 180km back to Woodford Car Hire under cover parking lot on a sunny day. We dropped the car off at 11:42am on the Sunday, 28 November. The Woodford employee that day assisted us, checked everything and said we were good to go. We received our deposit back within 12 hours. A few days later, we get a R17 000 invoice for damages, with photos of the dent that Zeyn identified before we left, and apparent hail damage on the roof (you can see absolutely nothing in the pictures they sent). We of course realize that they have made a mistake, as there was no hail while we had the car and we know that there was a huge hail storm on the Monday after we dropped the car off, which is where the damage occurred when they parked the car in their depot outside (which is where the pictures were taken, dated the 29th of November - the day after we returned the car). So we phone customer care to correct the mistake, takes 6 calls and 1 hour to reach someone, who says she'll look into it. Out of stress, because this is a huge amount of money for something we did not do, we drive to OR Tambo straight away to sort it out right then. On arrival, the manager apparently has no power and states that all he can do is "take the money" not help solve the problem. But we beg him to help us. He refuses to let us see the car, but eventually checks the system, and notes that the check was only done on Monday so confirms it wouldn't apply to us. He says we must email Customer Care and they'll sort it out. We leave feeling better it's been solved. We send the email, and the next day get another generic email saying that they've investigated and we must pay the money anyway. We seek assistance from a lawyer and send an email containing all evidence to Woodford, which they come back to saying yes we're right the dent wasn't from us but the last check there wasn't hail damage and now there is - (from after we dropped the car off). They then randomly amend the invoice to R11 730. This is a massive amount of money to pay for damages that you know were not from you.

We have had to get a lawyer involved, who sent a letter stating that we are not liable and we have evidence the damage was not from us, and on that same day Woodford took the R11 730 from our account anyway. Weeks later and they have still not rep**** to the lawyer, which will now prolong this awful situation.

Please, please rethink before booking through Woodford Car Hire. I am not the first person they've taken a HUGE amount of money and I won't be the last. (See posts from customers who have gone through similar experiences by filtering 1 star reviews).