BastardsFollow

Apparently my housing complex has it in the ownership agreement that they can tow your car from the parking lot for expired license plate tags. Rather than just the $50 ticket the police would give.

Plus, hey towed it on Saturday, and never bothered calling myself or my mother, who the car is registered under.

Which means I didn't find out it was gone until Monday morning, so I miss a day of work.

And they want to charge me for 3 days of impound fees. I'm sure I can argue that down to 1 day since they never contacted me, but I'm sure I won't see money back for the missed work unless I waste equal time and money in small claims.

fuck

Somebody has a case of the Mooooondays~!

Yeah, it's a sticker, color coded by month/year.

I'd give Tricky shit about it except that I'm guilty on driving on stickers expired for over a year. Not now, mind you, but I have in the past. By the time I got new registration stickers, they had to just issue me new plates. Only difference is that I was lucky enough not to get caught.

NJ had the same but did away with them a few years back IIRC.

Its worth a shot talking to them about the 13 mile tow. Did the management fine you for the car being on the property?

No, nobody did anything to me. Which is why I was wandering around the parking lot at 7:30am, trying to figure out if I parked it somewhere else or if it was stolen.

Oh, I've taken that little walk of shame before. It's always lovely when you finally call the police and they tell you, "Oh, so-and-so company towed your vehicle. I hope you didn't have anything you needed to do today."

You should aim your ire at the housing complex, squarely where it belongs. The owner of the towing company approached the owner of the housing complex and said "hey, I will give you 50% of the proceeds, if you let us tow cars off your lots for any minor violation we can think up. We can each make thousands a month off of this scam." The housing complex owner said "sure, I loves the moneys." If you and enough other residents complain loudly and often, they will cancel the contract just to avoid the bad publicty hurting maximizing rental income.

What happened to the 30 day leeway on tag expiration? Or do you not have that there?

My car got towed about a year ago. The tow-truck driver had to pull it out from the back and and didn't bother hooking up to the frame, but to the bar-thing between the tires.

Messed my car up good. I have an awesome mechanic though, who made the owner of the tow truck company come out to his shop and look at the damage. They did pay for the repair and supposedly fired the driver that did the bad tow.

Still, my car was ravaged and it will probably never trust a tow-truck driver again.

Sucks about your car tricky. Nothing more frustrating than dumping a bunch of money for 'nothing' really.

My tags are currently three months out of date and I've been diligent in trying to get them updated. First the jackholes who did my smog test didn't "automatically" report my pass to the DMV over the interwebs like they said they would. "Why, no sir, you don't need a receipt saying you passed. We will just automatically let the DMV know for you over the internet," and the DMV lost my proof insurance (I'm sure the walleyed idiot who opened the letter dropped it and didn't want to bend over to pick it up) but they had no problem cashing my check, so I sent my other copy (that little piece of paper you keep in your wallet/car, it's supposed to be proof worthy) and they deemed that unworthy though their paper work specifically says it would work. So, tomorrow I get to go to DMVhell and stand in line for an hour or so just to be told I need something else I already provided to them.

God I hate tow truck places. They intentionally put their lots far from civilization in order to reap higher fees. Not just a lot in the suburbs, but miles out of town.

My worst was on Christmas Eve a few years ago, got pulled over for a rear taillight being out. Next thing I know the officer has called a tow for the car because I had no insurance...for Virginia. Which I hadn't lived in for three years. What happened is that after I'd moved to California and reregistered and stuff here, Virginia kept me on their books. Even though I'd called DMV before I'd moved and asked them specifically if there was something I had to do to notify them I and my car were no longer residents. They said nope, didn't have to do anything.

So to their records I didn't have any car insurance anymore, and their DMV had sent out an automated flag. The officer's CA DMV check said that I had expired insurance in VA. The solution was even worse...I had to find my Virginia registration, which I couldn't. So had to fax back and forth with Virginia DMV proof that I was in California, proof of identity including birth certificates get that, then reregister here. The CA DMV wanted nothing to do with simply calling VA up and getting it settled in a few minutes. So that took almost three weeks, I was able to get my car from the tow lot just before it was about to be crushed for scrap. Total cost--about $600 including impoundment fees.

DMVs and tow places can both rot in Hell.

I remember a place I lived a few years ago, where the towing company contracted never towed anything (junker car missing 1/4 of the car sat there for months) so they got a new towing company....

... who proceeded to start randomly towing residents and charging them to get their cars back. They also would tow the surrounding area and the "non-resident parking" spots and then tell the people who got towed that they were parked in resident parking.

They towed one of my roommates that way (we got 2 permits for 3 cars total, and he was a mid year roommate replacement, so he didn't get a sticker), too bad for them he was a high ranking dude in the Navy's civilian contracting division, who pulled some sort of "illegally impeding government work" or some **** on them. They let him out free and never towed him again.

Unfortunately, they did tow our next door lady who had a similar problem three times and charged her each time.