On our recent trip to southern Africa, “Namibia and Nearby“, we had an unfortunate incident with Budget Rent a Car at the Jo’burg airport overcharging us by falsely claiming “damages” to our rental vehicle when we returned it. By overcharging, we mean triple the contract price of our rental! Sadly, we found out too late that this scam has been running for years. It doesn’t seem like Budget/Avis is the only company doing this, but they sure seem to be the worst among a bunch of bad actors!
Check out these links from around the web:
- https://www.zentravellers.com/renting-car-south-africa-advice/
- NEVER EVER rent from Avis/Budget in OR Tambo airport, Joburg
- Unpleasant surprise from AVIS South Africa
- car rental repair scam???
- Avis / Budget Car Hire
Not sure that we’ve ever seen a Trustpilot review score so low, with a whopping 84% of reviewers giving the lowest rating of 1!
More horror stories in their Google reviews too.
UPDATE #1
We disputed the bogus charges with our credit card company and they charged back ALL of the fake damage claim charges to Budget/Avis.
UPDATE #2
Over a year later, Budget/Avis is still emailing threatening legal action. Also warning that we’ll be “blacklisted” and won’t be able to rent from them again. As if that was ever going to happen!
UPDATE #3
Coming up on two years, and Budget/Avis is still hanging around like a bad smell. We simply cannot figure out why they keep emailing when our credit card company charged them back and they completely blew it with the attempted scam (at least with us). They seem to have an endless supply of email addresses that they use to chase us. We keep reporting their emails as spam but then another email arrives from a new name and email address. If this behaviour keeps up then we’re going to start paying Google to promote this page!
Here’s where their emails go:
