Quote Originally Posted by Sanlmar View Post
Remember this thread?

Daughter called me other day. She went to a concert in LA. Parked in a strip mall lot and was towed. $465 dollars - storage and towing.

Driving back to Vegas her transmission starts to act up. Luckily or coincidently there was a recall so she lucked out with a new transmission.

She is nuclear. Wants to sue. Lot had a cardboard (not metal permanent) sign. She thinks this is a code violation.

My advice?

Find the store owner or strip mall guard next time and open your wallet. Take care of your people kid.

I ain't helping you on this one.
That's bad advice.

Your daughter fell into the "after hours strip mall" tow trap/scam.

They hide tow trucks nearby, and an employee of the towing company hides in a vehicle, watching anyone who parks in the lot. As soon as someone steps off property and gets far enough away to not notice what's going on, they rush the tow truck into the lot, and the vehicle is gone within 5 minutes.

The strip mall owner gets a substantial kickback from the whole thing.

I actually posted about this scam last year (in relation to a news story about it), and jsearles spent several pages arguing with me like a douche, insisting that there was nothing wrong with laws that enable this. (This is despite the fact that his OWN state passed laws against this practice.)

Anyway, the correct advice to your daughter was to never park in a "too good to be true" strip mall in places where parking is tough.

Tipping the parking lot attendant or anyone else in the area wouldn't have helped, because they are making big bucks on each tow. If your daughter found the guy in charge and slipped him a $20, he would have laughed.