Europcar.co.zaReviews 1

I am writing this review after a deeply frustrating and unacceptable experience with Tempest Car Hire by Europcar at Cape Town International Airport, and I believe other customers deserve to know how this company handles situations involving lost or reported items. During our recent rental, my pregnant wife's wedding ring slipped into the vehicle while we were on our way to return the car. We immediately phoned the branch, explained the situation, and followed their instruction to bring the vehicle back so they could search for it. I made it very clear where the ring could have fallen — either into the handbrake compartment or under the carpets where there are open gaps.Despite this, Tempest carried out only a very basic surface-level search. They checked the handbrake compartment and nothing more. The carpets, the exact place I repeatedly told them to inspect, were not checked at all. I only learned this a full week later when a consultant finally contacted me. After that, communication deteriorated even further. I phoned them daily for more than a week, and the phone simply rang endlessly with no answer. On the rare occasions someone actually picked up, I was told I would receive feedback later that same day, and not a single one of those promised calls was ever returned.More concerning is that after two weeks of silence and unanswered calls, a staff member eventually admitted that the carpets had still never been checked, and that the vehicle had already been rented out again before they conducted a proper inspection. Only on 8 December — almost three weeks after the ring was reported — was I told that they were "finally going to look under the carpets." By that point, the vehicle had been passed to new customers, driven, cleaned, and handled by multiple people. Any meaningful investigation was already impossible, and this makes their later claims about thorough inspections entirely unreliable.Their final response was to deny any responsibility, quote generic Terms and Conditions, and abruptly declare the matter "closed." They stopped responding entirely after I confronted them with the timeline and with the statements made by their own staff. The lack of accountability, the lack of urgency, and the lack of basic communication are unacceptable for a national car rental company.What makes this even more troubling is that this is not the first time something has gone missing through Tempest. A few years ago, after returning another rental, I called back shortly after leaving the car because I had accidentally left a USB stick in the radio. Just like this time, they claimed they "found nothing." Two missing items in a row is a pattern, not a coincidence.This experience has shown me that Tempest by Europcar does not handle reported lost items with the seriousness or professionalism one would expect. They failed to follow the specific instructions I gave, failed to act in a timely manner, failed to communicate, failed to secure the vehicle when a valuable item was reported, and failed to provide consistent or credible explanations. Their process was chaotic, dismissive, and deeply unprofessional from start to finish.Based on my experience, I urge anyone renting from Tempest to be extremely careful with their belongings and to think twice before trusting this company with anything of value. I would never want anyone else to go through the same treatment, frustration, and disappointment that we did.