We have another reminder of just how slimy some towing companies can be. A woman in Chicago is accusing a local towing company of wanting $10,000 before she can get her car back.
Elaine Kelly was in a minor fender bender in her Toyota RAV4 along the city’s famed Lake Shore Drive, CBS News Chicago reports. It’s unknown just how badly her car was damaged, though she says that it was leaking coolant. All of a sudden a random tow truck pulled onto the scene.
This tow truck proceeded to tell me that they were affiliated with my insurance,” Kelly said, “that this would be nothing out of pocket, free of charge.”
It sounded like an easy option, so Kelly signed the papers — which at that point listed no prices — and contacted her insurance company.
Reality set in when she called her insurance company. The towing company — ironically named Perfect Timing Towing— was on some kind of bullshit and were demanding a payment of $10,890. Kelly’s insurance countered with a payment for $4,000 but Perfect Timing said no. Things got worse when Kelly went to the tow yard at the address listed on the paperwork she signed earlier.
At that point, Kelly came to the yard at 421 N. Cicero Ave. — the company’s address as listed on her paperwork — only to discover it belongs to a different trucking company. That company said several other upset customers, and even police officers, have shown up to its offices looking for answers.
Ultimately, a police report and a demand letter from her attorney got Perfect Timing to release her car, but she still had to part with $5,000 to get it. To make matters worse, Kelly says her car was damaged and the interior was “ransacked”; she claims all the property inside of her vehicle was stolen.
CBS contacted the Illinois Commerce Commission to get more info on Perfect Timing. The Commission said that the company was just issued a license in July; in the five months since then, the state has already received 18 complaints and issued the company 14 citations. CBS even tried calling the company directly and was hung up on.
Kelly says she was lucky to get her car back, and now wants to warn others who may be targeted by the company. “I was definitely taken advantage of at the scene.
“I was in distress, I was lied to — and yeah, I very much feel like a victim”, she told CBS. As For Perfect Timing Towing, state officials said the tow company has 30 days to pay its current fines or its license will be revoked.