I was chilling at my ex's house with friends for a birthday day party they were having when I hear my alarm remote paging me that something's going on... I go downstairs thinking it got hit by a ball or some guy was bumping or whatever... I was kinda surprised because the alarm isn't too sensitive to bull****. So I jet downstairs and see my car missing from it's spot and I had to chase the tow truck on foot and told him it was my car... I ask him to give me a break and he basically says **** you, charges me $105 dollars AND WAS TOWING MY ****ING CAR WITH THE E-BRAKE UP.... I asked him what he was going to do about my car and he said that its really not his problem and was going to continue to tow it with the brakes up-- even if it meant him going slow... I'm not too bitter about loosing the money, just how he was towing my car... I touched my rear rims and they were hot (the car had been off for hours so it was cool prior to towing... I was just in shock.. if he would've kept towing, the rotors would've been shot along with the pads and some possible tire blowouts from the heat... The car had only been towed about 100 yards since I was able to catch the driver...
Also posted here: http://www.southfloridamaximas.com/f...read.php?t=379

Cliffs:
1. Car got towed
2. Lost $105 dollars
3. ******* was towing car with e-brake up and was going to do nothing about it...
/rant

 

That sucks! Good thing you caught him. Do you think there's any damage?

 

why did he tow it?

 

forgot to mention, it was clearly my fault.. i was parked in a fire lane along with 5 other cars... mine was the easiest to get to...

From what I can see, there is no damage becuase it went only about 100 yards... I guess if any other manual guys out there park illegally, put the car in gear rather than leave the ebrake on (or just don't illegally park)... The towing business is generally sleazy...

 

Yeah they all act like they're towing 88 Ford Tempos. No respect for cars or their owners.

 

Sorry to hear about that...

 

Do I feel bad for you? No. Maybe next time you won't park in a fire lane.

 

They're basically terrorists, in that they kidnap your car and hold your it hostage. I used to give them the benefit of the doubt, because most times it seems the cars they tow were illegally parked in the first place. But my problem with them arose when they towed my legally parked car and were such a-holes about it.

Couple months ago, I was staying with my girlfriend while my place was being renovated. She got a temp. parking tag from her manager. On it, he wrote the "Issued On" date, but no "Expires On" date because I didn't know how long I would need it. He's a nice guy and says I can use it as long as I need. Well one morning, I go out and my car is missing. I call the manager but he has no idea. I call the police, etc. Finally they find my car at a tow yard.

After getting the run-around about where I go to get my car back, I finally find the place and pay $350 in cash. I have to borrow the money because all my stuff is in my car. My girlfriend and I wait nearly an hour in a smoke-filled office (she has asthma and I don't particularly like it myself) before some filthy-looking knuckle-walker come in. First thing he does is shake his finger at us and start to lecture us on illegal parking. He gets very angry several times and raises his hand like he's going to hit us. I tell him he is wrong. He goes, "I have never been wrong in my life!" (That must explain why he works in a tow yard.) Then he has the nerve to start insulting my girlfriend and my "kind." He acts like I'm some spoiled rich brat even though he knows nothing about me. Meanwhile, he is blowing smoke in our faces and flicking ashes on us, burning holes in our clothes. By now my girlfriend is crying. So I decide the best way to resolve this is to just show him the tag. We walk outside and I point to the tag clearly displayed on the rear window with no expiration date. He points to the "Issued On" date and says that's what he goes by. We go back and forth, but get no where. The guy is clearly delusional, so I just leave. The police don't help either. They just get his side of the story and tell me I shouldn't have parked illegally. What idiots! I would sue him, but I can't find a registered address for the towing co. The office I went to belongs to some insurance co. that won't acknowledge the existence of any towing business.

 

More reason to sue them for their business practices.

 

am i asking for pity?... do i want you to feel sorry for me? no... i admitted it was my fault... that having been said, i already stated that what irked me was the fact that they treat your car like trash... not the fact that they towed it for something that i already admitted was my fault... I was parked there with everyone and their mother... after dating my g/f for 4 years and parking illegally i guess i finally had it coming.. i just didnt expect the tow guy to be so low class and tow my car riding the breaks and flattopping my tires...

 

Around here they're brutal... they send 5 trucks and a minivan with the "supervisor" every single Thursday, and they'll be damned if they're not towing somebody that day...

My friend got towed 2 weeks ago... he sees them checking out the car from the office and comes downstairs, and they tell him he owes a single ticket from November (the ticket is invalid, the street doesn't even exist, but that's another story). He says "I'll pay it cash, but I have to go to the ATM across the street" -- the lady says "sorry, it's too late". They hook it and off they go.

He got it that same night from the impound, but not before paying $600+ between the ticket, the towing fee, storage and taxes. I guess it's better than waiting a day and fighting it, to find half the stuff in your car missing.

Last Thursday I saw somebody doing the same thing... they came up, Asian dude in a Maxima (!) was parked right across the street from Baruch... he was talking to the lady, showing him his ATM card (my guess is that he was gonna go get the cash). She closed the door, they hooked his **** and took off.

Now by law, AFAIK, if you're willing to pay the fine on the spot, they have to take the money and let your car go. One theory going around is that the towing people don't get their money if you do that, and somebody might be taking some payback from them...

* x-files music *

 

hey, tempos rule! greatest POS i ever owned

 

I own an 89 Topaz too, and yes, it is indeed the greatest POS I've ever owned too. But it's ugly as f*ck and I don't care if everybody and their grandmother backs up into it going 60 mph. I just smile and say "It's okay, it still runs!". You could throw it off a cliff and the damn thing would still run. I can't kill it, and I drive it like I'm playing GTA.

 

Jesus, I hope I never catch any of those jerkoffs towing my car. They won't have a job, and I would make sure the company went under before I was done. I get skittish about leaving my car at school, since I have already had problems with parking security at one of the lots, and then seeing campus police coning off spots in the "night school" parking lately.

You just don't f**k with a guys vehicle like that...

 

i HATE tow companies. at least when my baby got towed they used go jacks in the back...but of course i got charged even more. the tow industry is shady for sure, cost 150 bucks for them taking my legally parked car.

 

same here, but for me its a 86 astro van..yeahya

 

I'd be mad if I were you, but unfortunately, in this case you should be mad at yourself. When the towing co. has the police/fire backing them up, they have free reign to remove the vehicle in the most expedient way possible. That means no dollies and no worrying about whether it's in park or gear or has the e-brake set. Just be thankful there's no real damage, because you'd have no recourse if there were.

Look at the bright side, you lost $105 which is not much more than getting a red-light camera ticket. There is no permanent damage to your car. Learn your lesson now, and you'll save a headache in the future. I think I read that in a fortune cookie once....

 

Isn't the law that if the car's not hooked up yet when you get to it, they have to unhook it?

Also I heard it's illegal for them to tow a car with a person inside. So what would they do if while they were hooking it up you just hopped in the car and locked yourself in?

 

We actually had a call in which the person wanted to pay the fine on the spot and jumped in the car before they could hook it up, the tow company called us and we sent an officer out, the officer told the tow driver if the man was gonna pay then they couldn't tow it, they got pissed, tried to sue the PD, lost, they got all pissy and now they won't do contract work for the city anymore, which is fine with me, took them a year and a half to get to accident scenes when we called them for on call wreckers.

 

Maybe next time you won't be such a dumba$$ and park it in a firelane.

Dumba$$.

 

Sorry to hear about it, but you should learn your lesson not to park illegally next time. I'm surprise with towning company have complete disregards for other people cars when they damage it.

 

lol, damn jrod which part of miami was it?

 

you're right...

here in the wonderful SW... on 154ave and 82st
SW>NW

I know... I was clearly more pissed at myself but what really boiled my blood was how they treat the car... This was a non emergency "pick-up and go" tow... I could've been parked legally, illegally or up someone's mother's a$$ and they would still have had a complete and total disregard for my car...
Everyone hear at one point has or will park "illegally"... and if you do you chance getting towed, just pray the guy towing your car is an enthusiast or is on the .org becuase my point with this thread is that once your car is hooked up, expect some sort of damage... I expect to pay my fines if i get towed, not have to replace tires, brakes, or rotors if the guy kept towing my car the way he did... Just because you park illegally doesn't give the TOW TRUCK COMPANY, (FD or PD is another story), the right to destroy your car, especially in a situation where there is no emergency...

 

I parked in a parking lot near my highschool, I knew it was a private lot, but it was always empty (3 or 4 cars in a 20 car lot). For some reason, after I put my automatic Maxima into park, I pull the handbrake up

After school, I come out and my baby is gone. Take the subway to the impound, I find my Maxima still has the handbrake up. On the reciept, it says my car was towed 3 miles....

 

there is no way to escape getting towed. I've watched them tow a F250 desiel with the 4 wheel drive engaged and the parking brake on with the wheel cocked.

I know how you feel about towing companies. My celica i used to have got towed and because it was lowered they bent the exhaust all up while towing it. So not only did i have to pay the towing charge, i also had to pay to get my Greddy exhaust hacked up and fixed by a muffler shop. Next time i see that towing company i am going to

 

call the police... they will make them put the car down.

i just got into a yelling match with a tow truck driver a couple of weeks ago. i went to the gym with my friend and the gym is next to a bar called northern lights and they have bands play every weekend. i guess it was a pretty popular band and the parking lot to the whole strip was FILLED. so we drove around till we found a spot, near a resaurant close to the gym. so we are mid-way through the workout when someone else in the gym says "hey anyone parked near the restaurant might want to move they are towing people" so i looked at my friend and we go outside and sure enough he is pulling my car out of its spot...

i run up to the car and tell him to stop (he is pulling it out by the back bumper) and i see 20' rubber marks from my tires

i make him drop it and i oull away and check my car. keep in mind that my rear bumper has been repainted... so i check the bumper and notice that when he lowered the hook to hook it up under the car (passengers side) he dropped the rusty hook on my bumper, scratching it... then i look under the car and see that when he was pulling it out the chain came up and pulled on the bumper. this cracked the paint on the bumper... sooo i get really pissed and find the guy and show him the damage. he then says tough luck i am illegally parked, and i say "how" and he says i am on the resaurants property and i cannot park there, and there are signs everywhere. so i ask him to show me ONE sign that says i cannot park here and that i will get towed... he looks around and... NONE!!!! so he then says well i did not do the damage and drives away. i had to call the police and get a police report i now i have to argue with the resaurant and the towing company over who will pay for the damage... the worst part is i find out that the guy who owns the towing company is the father of an old highschool friend.

 

Does anybody have any success stories of going after these guys? Whether its legal action or just getting police involved?

 

If a tow company (private party, not government) tows your car (even for reposessions) and you see them doing so, you can tell them to stop and they have to. If they dont, you can call the police. But yes, the law is on your side if you tell them to stop towin your car.

 

That's right

 

I never knew that.

 

??? Care to elaborate?

 

A guy I worked with said he got like $600(?) for damage to his rear bumper once. They had just hooked up his car, but he convinced them to let him go. Then he pointed out the damage to his bumper. They supposedly paid out after looking at his car. But here's the punchline: He said the damage had actually been there for a long time, but he never bothered with it since it was his beater. But I'm skeptical because he said it happened in NYC.

 

Do you have a link to some law that states that, because last I checked that wasn't the case...

The repo guys are completely different... they're supposed to do peaceful repos. If you show up and tell them to go away, they're required to, and that's that. If they pull your car and you come out to find it gone, then that's another story... after it's in their possession, it's up to you and the lien holder.

Sheriff-related impounds are a whole other animal... they're out to get your car because you owe something (in CT it might even be taxes) to the city/state. If you show up, and they haven't hooked your car yet, you're supposed to be able to pay the fine on the spot and they can't tow you. If your car is hooked, the towing company will say they have possession of the car already, and that's that... you're off to fight it in the hearing, but chances are they won't put your car down.

But I could be wrong... it's been a while since I checked the law and I'm too lazy to go look now.

 

I saw them do something like that to a Land Rover. Nobody will deny that tow cos. are shady. But the trick is to minimize contact with them. We have to get out of this mentality where something bad happens to us, we sue someone. Dang, my Avaya stock lost 20% today after hours on an earnings warning, that's more than my Maxima's even worth. Who can I sue, CNBC or the CEO???? I never even saw it coming, as it's what I consider a blue-chip telecom. But had I been messing around with Sirius or something like that, and I came crying that I lost that amount, I would deserve harsh criticism.

 

Damn sad story. Luckily you didnt leave it in gear.

 

In Texas you just shoot them.

 

I am sorry but you are incorrect. Unless this is your state's law.

I tow cars on weekends for the local police department. (mostly accidents, DUI's, improper parking).

When an owner comes out of the house running, it is up to ME and only me if I want to leave the car or not. With the police officer standing by my side, he let's me make the decision.
If it is my good day & I feel like forgiving you that you parked the car at a place you were not supposed to (which caused me to miss half of the football game because I got paged by the local PD), I will still charge you the full amount you would normally pay when picking up your car (minus the storage fee).

To the creator of this thread:
We do not care if that car is your baby, if it looks brand new, etc... YOU parked it like an a-hole, I'm going to tow it as fast as I can to get back home.
Do not get me wrong, I do not abuse the cars, but if your e-brake is up, that is YOUR problem.

Think what you want but that's the truth!

BTW: I don't mean to sound like a total a-hole. Just telling you like it is.


p.s. when towing maximas, I am careful


- Jason

 

Wow so as a result of parking in an illegal spot if lets say your ebrake and your in gear, the damage done by towing is solely on the owner of the vehicle? You guys dont try to disengage the ebrake or anything?

Wow I park with ebrake and in gear, I know I dont park in bad spots but I will definately make sure I'm in a good spot cause I dont want to have to pay for new pads/rotors/clutch/and tranny!

 

I do not bother to even attempt to disengage the e-brake.
When you are in gear it doesn't matter (front wheel drive).

I must confess that 90% of the time, I drive a flatbed truck. So at most that your car suffers is when I'm pulling it up on the truck. Then it's just sitting (just like it was parked)

- Jason

 

oh so you guys will pick it up from the proper side? what if for some reason you cant get to the proper side?