Dakotadreams
New Member
My son was involved in an accident and his car (which was in my name) was totaled. The other person was at fault. We called AAA to tow the car. They sent the local AAA approved towing Co. I told the driver to tow the car to my house and showed him my AAA card. He convinced me that I should let him tow the car to their lot and that the responsible party's insurance company would take care of the towing, fees and disposal of the vehicle. I agreed and thought no more of it. Then I got a form letter about 10 days later informing me that if I didn't dispose of the car that I would be charged storage fees @ $20/day. I called immediately and was told that the driver was correct and the insurance company would take car of the car. The letter was just a routine formality. I eventually settled with the Insurance company for a cash amount and never thought of it again until I received a letter in the mail about 4 months later from a collection agency stating that I owed $1300 for towing and storage fees and that the car had been sold at auction to cover the costs, but they only got $68 for it. I immediately filed a dispute with the Collection agency and wrote letters to the Insurance company and to the Towing company explaining what had transpired. The Insurance company had only communicated with my son (a 17 yr old at the time) and had told him that they weren't going to dispose of the car. He failed to inform me of that. However, I never heard a single word from the Towing company that the car was just sitting there collecting storage fees until I received the letter from the Collection Agency. The Towing company then informed me that they could do nothing, even though they remembered talking to me initially about this because the account had already been sold to the collection agency. I sent off more letters to the Towing company and the Collection agency to try to get someone to see that I was being victimized here. Again I never heard from either entity for over 9 months until I noticed that it had cropped up on my Credit Report. Now I owe over $1500 because of Interest. I suppose I will have to pay it eventually, but I wonder if there is any recourse for this kind of shoddy business practice.
