ComplaintsforJL Towing & Recovery Corp.

• Initial Complaint

  09/13/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  JL *** and towing are in same building and same company. Before you do work with them beware. Liars and unethical people will always try to swindle you out of your money. Ethics & doing the right thing are character traits that transfer to all business and parts of life. My daughter visited *** from ********* and the people who live in the apt complex gave her a plastic official visitors parking tag to park in the lot. The sign in the lot said permit parking only. Any reasonable person would think if you have a plastic visitor parking tag that that suffices as a permit. The “official”visitor parking area was across a 10 foot strip of grass from where she parked. It was a very large lot that was 50% empty. I understand they are contracted to tow vehicles for the complex but someone with a clearly visible official parking tag that was in a spot that was 10 feet away from the official area for visitors in a lot that is 50% empty and they still tow. There a difference between making 180 dollars of peoples hard earned money by technically being allowed to do something and doing the right thing. It was on a Sunday morning at 6:30 am when my daughter was leaving to make it back to ********* for her work shift when she realized she had been towed. Their posted number has two options. One goes to a non emergency voice-box and the other for emergency goes to the same voicemail. Nothing on their message about how to get your car back on non weekdays. Nothing on their website about how to get your car back on weekends. I left two voicemails and an email. Interesting how they charge you 45 extra dollars for storage over 24 hours and conveniently tow on Saturdays and give no hint of how to get your car back until Monday. I drove hours down there and caught a driver and got my car back on Sunday. If they had a way to communicate with them I could have saved the 65 dollars in gas. When I picked the car up they had dropped I’m in a mud hole and told me to get it

  

  Business response

  09/27/2022

  Mr. ***** unfortunately in the impound industry people are not going to be happy about the situation regardless. It is just the nature of our job enforcing the rules of the private properties. Just to clarify JL Towing and ** *********** are completely different businesses that just so happen to be in the same building. ** *********** sells classic after market truck parts online to thousands of people around the country and has different employees under that company. JL Towing is an impound and repossession company for ************ and surrounding areas. So to clarify they are completely separate entities with different business models and employees.Now when it comes to the pass your daughter received, firstly it is the resident’s responsibility to tell their visitors the parking rules of the complex. It is stated in their leasing agreement that they signed when they started to rent from the property. Secondly it states on the pass that your daughter received “This pass is valid only in visitor parking lot”, so even if the resident did not inform her than it clearly states that there is a designated parking lot that this pass is valid in and she should be cautious on where she parks.The signage in the lot does indeed say “permit parking only” but there is also clear signage that shows what lot is for residents and which are for visitors which you did notice later since you stating there was 10 ft strip of grass between the two lots. It doesn't matter if they were full or 50% full or 10% full or even empty there are clear indications on where visitors park and where people who pay to live their park. Those rules are set by the owners of the property, and they contract JL Towing to enforce those rules. The rules are not to be partially followed they are there to be completely followed.With your complaint to us not having our hours posted, attached is a screenshot of our website where it clearly states that we are opened Saturday & Sunday 12pm-2pm to release impounds. When it comes to getting in contact with someone in regard to getting your vehicle back, if you selected the non-emergency option it goes to our voicemail and once the tow truck drivers arrive at the business, during the times that are listed on our website, they call back those people that have left voicemails to answer any questions that people may have. If you selected the emergency option on the phone you would be sent to person immediately to answer any questions or help with issues. If none of this was true than no one would have been picking up their vehicle that weekend and we would have had 20 vehicles to release to customers Monday morning and that was not the case.As for the charges for the impound, we are compliant to Virginia law 46.2-1233-1. It states that night tows are to be charged $180 and after 24 hours we are to charge upwards of $50 a day for storage. If your daughter would have come in on Monday she would have been made aware of the storage fees, because we are not just going to let customers leave a vehicle here for days we are not a storage lot, but we would have work with her on the fees. We understand that people have different circumstances that we can accommodate but we do have a business to run, and we have to do our job. In the end you were only charged the towing fee of $180 so there were no extra charges you had to pay.In reference to your vehicle being “dropped in a mud puddle”, we did not intentionally put your vehicle in a mud puddle, it had rained that night and splashed on your tires (you can see in the picture there is no mud on the treads of the tire) we cannot control the weather. The mud was only on your tires and even if we hadn’t towed the vehicle, mud would been there just by driving it down the road.We understand your frustrations but your daughter did not follow the rules of a property that were clearly stated. All of our information is clearly communicated on the website with our hours and phone number if there were any questions and we followed Virginia law when it comes to the charges on the tow. We did the job that we are contracted to do and complied to state laws, so there will be NO REFUND issued for this tow.If you have any questions or concerns you can always give us a call. The manager is available Monday-Friday 9-4:30 

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩