City Tow(ed) no MORE! (info from 2005)
City Tow defeated!
“We defeated the bums!” gloats Chicken John, maniacally.
After tossing his anger management class lessons out the window, Chicken John (with the help of Simone, Gal Friday) defeats monolithic, corrupt towing racketeers.
Rickenbacker collection activity deemed unethical, impure, immoral, illegal and bathed in vileness.
Whoo Hoo!If you paid any money to Rickenbacker Collections for any car that you signed over to them between 1999 and 2004, you are now OWED. Rickenbacker collections will re-pay any money collected for City Tow on cars that were impounded and subsequently surrendered to the towing company. Any and all other collection notices are rendered invalid.City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed for an injunction back in in July. Tuesday, Nov 30th the court ruled that the collection agency would return an estimated $340,000 that they already collected.
The 72,000 motorists that were to be charged are now off the hook. Simone was charged $700 or so. $700 times 72,000 people = $50,400,000. Fifty million, four hundred thousand dollars. Wow. What a scam. We won.
But all is not sunshine and roses. There is more:
This is a message I wrote to Carol Stuart (awesome woman, makes you restore your faith in government):
The following is from this link….
http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/cityattorney_page.asp?id=1300
The second paragraph is a quote from the city attorney. I’ve pasted it here:
“The City will no longer allow itself to be victimized by a company that has repeatedly violated its duty to the citizens of San Francisco,” said Herrera. “As a result of our investigation, changes have already been made to ensure that no city contractor has the ability to repeat this kind of fraud in the future. And we’re pleased with the cooperation we’ve received from the Department of Parking and Traffic toward that end.”
I’d like to pull out one line:
“…changes have already been made to ensure that no city contractor has the ability to repeat this kind of fraud in the future.”
The most relevent thing that may come out of this whole thing is that Auto Return is going to do the same thing. I asked them. They said they were. Today, if you walk into Auto Return at 850 Bryant, and say to them that your car was towed and you just want to sign it over to them, they will let you do that. If you ask if you have to pay anything, they will say no. At their option, they will bill you later. I firmly believe that they will do just that. I think that sucks.
Just pointing it out….
chicken
You should all send email to Carol Stuart and tell her that she is totally AWESOME!!!! She is the one who really made this happen and has been battleing City Tow for 10 years. She is an investigator, in other words she does all the work while someone else gets their picture in the paper. Somebody send her chocolate. She is the one who will be babysitting Auto Return and will make sure that JUSTICE PREVAILS!!!
Carol.Stuart@sfgov.org
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