Predatory Tow Truck Companies…sounds like something off the SyFy Channel right? You break down in the middle of the night and are towed to off to hell, screaming into the darkness. But this, I think, might be worse.
Mary, my daughter, got a flat tire on the side of the interstate. She didn’t have a spare or a donut because she’s Mary. A State Trooper stopped and told her she had three days to move the car and of course her car was towed the next day. Long story short, three days latter we found the car, and got the money to free Mary’s car from Tow Truck prison.
The fifty dollar flat tire cost us almost most five hundred dollars
The Tow = $100
“Paper Work” = $75
Storage for 4 days – $200 (yes it cost fifty bucks a day to park Mary’s car in a muddy scrap yard.
And I still had to buy a tire for the car = $75.
Now, here’s the predatory part. If a driver can’t come up with the $450 cash (no checks or plastic)to pay the Tow Truck company, they get to keep your car. Then they get to sell it and that’s where the real money is for Tow Truck Companies.
How do I know this nasty business plan? I worked on an advertising campain for a local towing service last year, and I asked the owner “what kind of customers do you really want?”.
Without blinking he said, “Poor ones, who can’t afford to get their car out”.
“Huh”? I said stupidly.
“Yeah, that’s where I make money. When people can’t pay to get their car back I fix them up and sell them.” He pointed proudly out the window, to his… used car lot.
AAARRRR. So, it’s the poor schumcks, hard working, blue collar, minimum wage folks that the Preditory Tow Companies are looking to screw.
If you make $150,000 a year you can afford to free your car from Tow Truck Prison, if you work at I-Hop or you are a lowly college student (named Mary Hampo) it’s really hard to come up with $450 dollars. You might have to wait till pay day, but then becasue of the delay you owe the Tow Truck Company $650 rather than $450 and that $450 is your entire pay check.
So who’s getting really screwed?Working class people. This is a predatory practice and it needs to end. Call your State Representative in the morning. You need to call because the cashier at the grocery store who makes $310 a week, the dish washer at your favorite restraunt who makes $245 a week is getting beat up. And chances are they will not have the time or idea to call a local politician to make this practice end. So, you need to help out your brother. Make the decision tomorrow, Monday, Jan. 31 you will spend just ten minutes making a phone call or sending an e-mail to your State Rep. Consider it a random act of kindness.
And remember, always keep a good spare in the trunk.