San Francisco towed my car and then lost it for 3 months. I called repeatedly and they insisted they didn't have it, and that I file a police report for it having been stolen. I got another car to replace it.

3 months later, Erin found it, while taking a walk past the impound lot on Harrison. They made her pay all 3 months of impound fees.

I had my car stolen in San Francisco and had to pay to get it out. The city contracts out towing services and the contract doesn't say they can't charge for stolen cars, so...

The city made an effort to change this a few years back but stopped when they realized that they would have to pay the towing company a bunch of money from loss of revenue with the modified contract.

If you made a police report, make sure to amend it with any damages as well as towing fees suffered in case they catch the perpetrator. This will give you a basis for remediation.

It turns out that car theft is an extremely low priority class of crimes in the Bay Area.

That's so frustrating!! Sorry you had to go through that :( There should be an easy way to dispute that sort of thing that doesn't require you to take a day off work. There seems to be a lack of checks and balances in US that leads to all sorts of bs scenarios. It's one of the reasons I don't miss the country.

It turns out to be very difficult to sue a municipality. They need to be on the hook for a lot more than towing fees to make it cost effective.

Wow, that's $6500.

Doesn't matter. I don't live in Minneapolis so to contest it I would have had to take another day off of work and spend a significant amount of time and money driving there to get $200 back.

Man that's bullshit. We need an agency / taskforce that can investigate that sort of thing and bring swift justice / reform without making the little guy suffer through the court system.

They used to be called journalists.

I actually just saw a local news report on someone breaking towing rules in Minneapolis a few nights ago. They got some city council people on TV even.

I mean a task force with authority to act quickly with incentives aligned purely with the average citizen. Something that doesn't require me to wait - they take it upon themselves to serve justice.

Robin Hood?

It would help to be able to sue someone in small claims court for free, and through the mail or entirely online. Having to take time off from work that you can't take and pay money you don't have, in order to get $200 back, are just enough little barriers to prevent people from using the legal system that their taxes pay for.

The silver lining is that if enough people actually did sue in small claims court, it bleeds the beast in terms of forcing the company to spend time in court for each infraction.

If 100 plaintiffs sue 1 defendant, each plaintiff has to appear once. The defendant (or their paid agent) gets dragged in 100 times.

Various industry Ombudsman’s in Australia do an alright (but not perfect) job of this, for certain industries (like telco). And the ACCC is scary, too. I wish they worked quicker however, and were expanded to more industries.

It shouldn't be. If anything, it should be treated as theft and the towing company treated accordingly.