Good news!

after a stroke of pure luck my project car has been located!

When this saga began i suspected the vehicle had been towed by a member of my homeowners association but they denied responsibilty. i then turned my attention to the property management company who also denied responsibility. neither entities claimed respsonsibility for having my car towed (it was unregistered and parked in my condo parking lot).

by a stroke of PURE luck i happened to see what looked like my project car sitting in a lot next to a local body shop. i circled around and made a closer inspection of the vehicle and low and behold - it was mine!

i spent almost a month tracking this car down hoping against hope that this was the case and today, after i had pretty much given up on the prospects of seeing my car again it caught the corner of my eye.

now for the next favor i would like to ask. is there anyone qualified to help me reaquire my car from the company who towed my vehicle?

i've been doing some research and it looks to me like this car was illegally towed. florida law states that signs must be posted containing specific contact information for the towing company responsible for towing vehicles from private property if the owner of the vehicle did not authorize the towing of the vehicle.

the location my car was towed from had no posted signs indicating any type of contact information for the towing company responsible for towing my vehicle.

if anyone has experience with this sort of dilema please let me know!

thanks,

Ray

 

I suggest you contact a lawyer familiar with Florida law. My second suggestion is to call the police and tell them you know who is in posession of stolen property. The tow company/body shop will have to provide the police with some sort of documents to prove it is not stolen and actually impounded at someones request.

How much does the body shop want to have it released?

 

turns out that they did inform the local police but the police couldn't verify this until i did their jobs for them. they tried on more than one occasion to find a record of this car being towed but couldn't do so until i provided them with a badge number provided by the towing company.

i tried contacting the police right away but they weren't any help until i had already found the car and the people responsible for towing it. what's the point of keeping records if you can't use them efficiently?

the overall price they are asking me to pay is $340 to have the car towed to my new house. it just feels like i'm paying a ransom for my own property especially because there was no posted contact information.

Ray

 

before you say there was no posted info go double check because it does not have to be right by your car the sign can be anywhere on the property. The only reason I know this is because I had the same happen to me in the past and also because after this happened to me I drove a tow truck for a while in FL. Honestly the best/easiest thing to do right now is to just pay them their money. ps also if you live in a private comunity the towing information might be on the paper work you signed when you first moved in. Which under any court it is a sign document that (even thou must people never read this things) told you where I P would be towed to.

 

thought about that and there are some mentions of this in the homeowners association agreements. however, florida law states that signs must be posted within 25 feet of every entrance and exit accessable by the main road to the parking lot.

these items certainly are NOT there. i lived in this location for the last 5 years, there are two entrances and neither have signs posted. there used to be a sign posted for a wrecker service that no longer operates in tallahassee but it hasn't been there for at least the last 3 years.

odds are i'm going to just fork over the dough and go on my way but i'm certainly NOT happy about it.

i can understand paying the tow bill, but the storage fee is absolutely obsurd considering i had no way of tracking my car down except for dumb luck.

Ray

 

your right try arguing that with your association