We hired a 4 ton truck from Spartan over a 14 day period for 4500km in December. After 2626km the truck broke down, whilst they did assist in getting the truck to a mechanic they said they were not liable to send a replacement truck and wanted to charge us an additional deposit on another truck. When pushed on why the deposit was so high the response was to cover costs of the driver, and the new truck. We of course refused after reviewing complaints from others about how they never see their deposits refunded. On hiring we were told Spartan was a national company and should there be any problems they would be equipped to assist which we found out they are in fact not national as a replacement truck had to be driven from Durban because they do not have a branch in the Eastern Cape.
Our crew were left without a truck and our stock in the back of their truck, Spartan's operations manager could not give us any indication on when the truck would be fixed and said they would not be liable for any of the costs of our crew as it states in their contract, but could not provide a date when it would be fixed. We were given no other choice but to hire another vehicle, which we managed to get from Imperial (what an incredible company and experience, so helpful, staff were so polite and their vehicle was in impeccable condition). When our crew arrived at the workshop to offload the stock from the Spartan truck they were told the truck was fixed - we contacted Spartan and they had no idea and said it was in fact not - we eventually contacted the mechanic who confirmed it was ready for release but he had not been paid and the truck would not be released until he had. When contacting Spartan they denied this and said that was not the case. We had to proceed to use the other hired vehicle, this cost was all of course for our bill despite the truck actually being fixed.
Our crew finished their job and needed to head back to Durban, still after 4 days the payment was not released and Spartan's operational manager could not advise when it would be. We gave them a deadline on when we needed to be informed as we needed to hire yet another vehicle to get our crew back to Durban. We received a Whatsapp the following morning after our deadline, being told we could collect, our crew were already on route home.
Spartan's breakdown manager proceeded to inform us that the cause of the breakdown was due to terrible driving on our drivers part and that he had never seen anything like it (we knew they would try this thanks to all the other complaints so we ensured we had all the reports and photos of the parts and cause of damages). In short the breakdown was due to a lack of maintenance on the truck. When we spoke to the operations manager about this and asked why they would hire a truck out knowing it had not been maintained, the response from him was that he did not know how long we were hiring the truck for as it was an online booking. SHOCKING to say the least. They not only cost us money but also put our drivers safety at risk KNOWINGLY. Something we will be looking into legally.
They owe us our deposit and refund on the KM not done as they could not get a replacement and were in fact in breach. Just a continuation of the terrible bad attitude and service, they are wanting to withhold and not refund as the truck was left in PE (all by their doing for firstly not maintaining the truck and then not paying the supplier). We can only presume that the additional deposit on the second truck would have been allocated to pay the bills for the repair.
We requested the invoice and were told they would be open on the 3rd and we would receive it then - no surprise the 3rd comes and now they only open on the 10th, strange for a NATIONAL company.
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