Woodford Car Hire Arvostelua 

I rented a car in September of 2023 from Alamo and when I arrived at Cape Town Airport, I was directed to Woodford Car Hire's office to pick up the car. Got the paperwork done and off I went.

The return process went smooth, and it never crossed my mind that I was dealing with a bunch of friendly fraudsters. This became clear when Woodford Car Hire failed to return my deposit and also charged my credit card with a +-$ 35.00 charge for what appear to be the cost of filling up the gas tank, the same gas tank that I filled up minutes before driving into the airport property.

According to Alamo, these charges never happened as they do not appear on the Alamo invoice and were paid directly to Woodford Car Hire (clever move), so Alamo's snotty response was to go talk to your bank. Shame on them as well.

After this experience, I researched Woodford Car Hire and found that scamming customers is just part of their way of doing business.

The takeaway:

1. Avoid doing business with Woodford Car Hire.

2. Rent from a reputable international car rental company that has legitimate offices in the country you will be visiting. If things go wrong, you can talk to a person in your home country, and not have to deal with fraudsters in another country.

3. I suspect Woodford Car Hire is targeting customers from other countries visiting South Africa. It is just harder to fight them from the other side of the globe, and they know that.

Most fraudulent car rental company in South Africa.
Be careful before rental from this FRAUD CAR RENTAL company.

good prices good vehicles did have issues with getting the deposit back hence 3 stars

I had a terrible experience with the Woodford Group, which manages customer servises and care for Enterprise rent a car. Woodford charged me twice for the rental car price and the deposit, and inspite of emails and phone calls they have yet to refund me over 18 000 ZAR! I had rented a car with 0 excess insurance, I received a check out invoice with NO damage and a day later they sent pictures of the car with a damage I did not do, showing the display of the car with more mileage than the mileage the car had when I returned it. Clearly someone drove the car after me and did the damage. When I pointed this our in my email with photos I took before leaving the car, I received an email stating that I am liable for "all/new" damage and was sent an additional invoice of ZAR 575 for handling fees with no reference to the double charges of car rental and deposit. Another separate email followed asking how I would rate the experience! I am still waiting for the reimbursement of the double charges and deposit and disputing the handling fees for a damage I did not do to the car! Will never rent from this incompetent car rental group, which includes ALAMO and Woodford.

Warning: Untrustworthy Company

I was given the wrong vehicle upon renting. However, the most concerning aspect of my interaction with them occurred during the return process. Their agents made me wait for an excessive two hours, from 07:30 to 09:30, attempting to contact their manager (who was not available) to rectify a billing issue.

The issue arose because they closed the contract instead of extending it as I had requested. This decision was made despite my explicit request to extend the contract to cater for excess mileage differences. It became evident that their actions were motivated by maximizing their profit, rather than providing satisfactory customer service

Despite more attempts to resolve the issue, they have not taken responsibility for their actions or made any effort to rectify the situation.

I want to warn others to be cautious when dealing with them. Their actions demonstrate a lack of integrity and respect.

I urge anyone considering doing business with them to proceed with caution. It's unfortunate that I have to leave such a negative review, but I believe it's important to share my experience to protect others from similar situations.

Their lack of accountability and disregard for customer satisfaction are concerning traits for any business.

We ordered a Toyota Urban Cruiser for our holiday in South Africa - Johannsburg Airport. After waiting for almost 2 hours! the car still wasn’t available and they offered us a Mercedes A class.
We felt pushed to take this car because the Toyota we ordered wouldn’t be available anyway.
While driving we experienced the car was not suitable for South African roads, this turned out to be true as this resulted in 2 flat tires at the same time. Stuck in the middle of a remote area with these flat tires we were hardly able to contact Woodford for assistance. The operator of Woodford was not authorised to take any decisions which made communication very difficult, nearly impossible.
We managed to get the tires repared ourselves with help of locals. We heared from several people that we were actually very lucky that they stopped to help us because people in South Africa normally don’t stop.
The people who helped us said that this car is not suitable for South African roads except most of the highways due to a lot of potholes (sometimes enourmous).
Due to a blister, not attributable to us, on one original tire we decided to swap the car at Cape Town Airport. To our surprise Woodford charged us for 2!! new tires. Complaints about this were bluntly dismissed.
The car we got here was again a car with low profile tires and again no other suitable car available. With this car we needed to fill up Adblue almost immediately and this car had a slow puncture and worn out tires.
Conclusion: perhaps despite lower prices, go to another rental car company.

Thieves. Thieves. Thieves

We've used Woodford car hire a number of times and been very happy with the service.
Unfortunately, I now need to add our recent experience to the growing list on Trustpilot.
Following a hire from OR Tambo, we've been charged for toll fees on roads we didn't travel on, and at times we certainly didn't use the vehicle. For a week of our hire, the car was parked up at a game park, so not on any highway.
I've emailed twice now, asking that they check the information they have received and passed on, but no response.
Holding the credit car authorisation has enabled these charges to be debited from my account. It's not a huge amount, but I fear part of a trend which is now occuring.
Sad to see that a previously super company are now causing their customers such issues.

Returned my rental on the 13th of February 2024. Unfortunately, the reviews about this company are true. They do not return your deposit after you return their vehicle. they advertise this will be done in 72hrs. I contacted the call centre on the 19th February 2024, provided my reference and the person I spoke to told me "the deposit wasnt released, but she did it now". I accepted this and waited 3 days. Today is the 22nd of February, still nothing. I held out on leaving a review until the whole process was complete since the rental experience was good up until I realized they going to make me waste my time trying to follow up on what is mine.

Worst car hire company ever. If there was a -1, I would rate them that. Woodford in OR Tambo is the worst. Don't ever hire a car from them. My husband hired a car from them and when we fetched the car, the guy at the parking lot, when we took the car said we are good to go without doing an inspection of the car. We realise that there was a dent on the car, my husband went back to the airport a few days after they asked him about the inspection sheet, we told them that we were informed that we can go without doing the inspection. Now they telling my husband he won't get his deposit back because of that dent and it wasn't even my husband who dented the car. Woodford OR Tambo is a scam. They are not to be trusted. Don't ever hire a car from them.

Keep well clear !! If they have your credit card they will charge you for every scratch ion the vehicle even though you never caused the damage and it was on the sign out damage report - incompetent or dishonest. Let’s go with incompetent to be kind

Booked a car with safety seat for my 4 year old child. Booking was made 10+ months in advance. When we arrived to CPT, after 24 hours of travel, to 30+ degrees heat, they told us that they’re out of safety seats. After a half hour waiting we left the place without the seat. Effectively having had to put our child in danger. Another family had the exact same problem the same time. We had to return the next day to pick up the seat. The first seat offered to us smelled heavily of vomit. Swapped the seat by myself - so the other family probably got that one later. Had no support from customer care as they answer in 24 hours. They finally responded 3-4 days later with the question: how do you rate the support. Wouldn’t recommend, especially if you need a safety seat.

I rented a car in Durban where the damage to the glass was fixed, when I returned the car in Johannesburg they said I had damaged the windscreen. I showed them the inspection report, which proved that the damage was already there before. Despite this, they kept money on the credit card. Extremely unpleasant experience, do not recommend using such a company

Absolutely horrific experience with Woodford Car Hire. They rented me a car with a chunk of rubber missing from the front wheel (arrived late at night so could not do the full visual inspection and so they instructed me to do so in the morning which is when we noticed how unsafe the car was). Took 1.5 days to swap it out to a safe car, which only happened since I went to another location as they did not return any emails or call despite their WhatsApp respondent escalating the issue. They have issued no apologies, have not replied to emails on return to address the issue, and cost us 1.5 days of our trip (plus many hours dealing with this continued issue). Do NOT rent with them (Enterprise, National, Alamo). Use Hertz instead.

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Edited 3/28: Adjusting the review from 1/5 to 3/5 as I eventually did hear back from management regarding my experience and an effort was made to resolve this to an agreeable outcome.

This company is absolutely FRAUDULENT. We hired a car and my deposit still has not been released since December . I wrote an email to their customer service email for them to release my funds . I got an email back that funds were released on the 31/02/23 employee called Tracy David responded from an email with a gmail dot com on the 12 of Jan when I emailed their professional customer service email. On the 16 of Jan she then again sent an email requesting the bank to release my deposit of R12500 instead R12 000 was deducted from my account on the 16th of Jan, this was again after they asked for my card number to “ request bank to release my funds” . I have not been aware of this until now when my bookkeeper asked me what was going on . The car was returned fully fuelled up yet I also got R-417.25 and R383.24 deducted as well. I WILL be suing this company for fraud .

I rented a Toyota Starlet for 5 weeks in December. The booking, pick up and drop off was very easy. The car was new and wonderful to drive.
I was supposed to return the car at 8.30am, but my flight was at night. They allowed me to return the car at 3pm without charging me an xtra day.
I highly recommend this company and I will use them again when I visit SA.

There are hundreds of warnings online from tourists like me who have been scammed by Woodford Car Hire - clearly their business profit model consists of taking R25,000 out of a customer’s credit card without permission as their routine practice and then ignoring all requests for explanations and replies. In the rest of the world, South Africa, that is called theft.

I’m an Australian business executive and I hired a car from their Cape Town Airport branch in November 2023 for 10 days. I had full walk-away insurance cover with nil excess. Nil excess - Mr Suleman, do you, as the owner of the company, actually care what this term means in a car rental contract ? Or is this how you get rich in a corrupt 3rd world country ?

The rental car was then accidentally damaged on its side panel while under my care. I called Woodford immediately to report the damage (my 1st ever with any rental) and reminded them I have full insurance cover for all damage and a nil excess (which I paid a lot of extra money for when I hired the car). They said just get a police report for the damage and deliver that when I hand back the car and it will all be fine. Did all that. Then 2 weeks later I discover a R25,000 unauthorised debit from Woodford on my Australian credit card - no email, no warning, no explanation, no letter, no justification. Now 2 months later I’m still waiting and waiting for a reply from them to explain how, contractually, they can debit my credit card for damage when the contract shows I had a nil excess so there is by definition nil payable in the event of any damage. I have repeatedly asked them for the evidence that they are entitled to debit my card for R25,000 - no responses ever. So over to my Australian credit card company’s lawyers to dispute this.

Let’s drive this consistently corrupt company of South African thieves out of business by not using them. Don’t by deceived by the cheerful staff at the airport office - behind the scenes the company’s admin policy seems to be to scam you by stealing money out of your credit card, no matter what your contract says, and then ignoring all requests for explanations. Just read online how many people have experienced exactly this. Typically corrupt South African business practice and no police action is ever taken. Don’t rent a car from Woodford Car Hire.

After returning my rental car at Johannesburg OR Tambo Int. Airport, I received a final Rental Agreement / Invoice. This includes an unexplained "E-TOLL" amount of R459.74. The particular vehicle I hired was not equipped with an e-toll tag (confirmed by rental agency staff when I collected the car) and I paid all appropriate toll charges throughout my trip with cash at the toll booths so there should be no additional toll charges. I contacted Alamo customer services about this multiple times who said they were passing it on to their local agents in South Africa (i.e. Woodford). After 5 weeks I have yet to receive any communication from them - let alone an explanation. If you rent from these people (and I will not be doing so ever again), you are basically writing a blank check for them to deduct money from your credit card!

Value seemed to be good in the beginning. I was able to quickly overlook the fact they didn't fill up the fuel tank before i was handed the keys then asked to bring it back full. The real pain is the fact that after returning the vehicle, not only did they not return my bond but they charged my card, then again, until i realised this and had to cancel my card as nobody from Woodford has been able to fix this administration issue. That was 4 months ago and i am still waiting for re imbursement. DO NOT give them your card details or they may steal from you too.

A very helpful lady at the call center escalated on our behalf and she resolved the issue for us by the following day.

Dear Woodford Car Hire
As per my wife's previous emails to you we had already sent an email to your customer service so please stop replying to us b=y saying email customer service.
We are getting NO RESPONSE and feel it is ridiculous you have charged us R3000 for e-tolls for the week we were in the Kruger National Park. The E-tolls from OR Tambo to Kruger are around R20. We have emailed all the proof of this. Is there possibly fraud going on in your company where someone is stealing your customers money as it is on a credit card.
Please can you sort this out asap.