you park in the wrong spot somewhere. maybe at a friend’s apartment complex, or at a store when you’re actually walking somewhere else, or whatever. they could ticket you—still charge you a fine for parking where you’re not supposed to. but instead, in a far more crippling way than a fine (which is already hard enough for low income people), they call a third party and steal your car. so you have lost your means of transportation, which you will only learn the next time you need your car, because they don’t have any need or care to notify you.
so first, you have to figure out which towing company they used. which you can only do if the place that decided your car was in the wrong spot is still open, or if you can get someone on the phone.
assuming you figure out which company towed your car, which one time took me over an hour on its own because the number on the signs warning about towing in the parking lot was a dead number, you then have to figure out how to get there. without a car. god help you if you don’t have someone in your support network to pick you up or public transportation, because most of the time it’s at least a mile away.
you find a way to get there, you call them to see if your car is even really there, and they tell you they won’t give your car back until you pay them. how much? well, it’s not regulated, so they can pretty much say whatever number they goddamn feel like. i recently got towed by a company infamous in my college town and they charged me a whopping $180–half of my paycheck for two weeks during the school year. when the same company towed my brother last year, and we both have the same sized cars, they charged him $300. they don’t have to justify the charge, they don’t have any itemized receipt, because what are you going to do? not pay it? you have to get to work and you’re already short on time because you had to walk to the goddamn towing place or have someone come get you to bring you there or spend an hour on the phone with different people trying to figure out where the fuck your car was in the first place.
it’s extortionate. it’s absolutely insane that they can, without exaggeration, steal someone’s car and hold it for ransom under the assumption that you will pay anything to get it back, because of the extent to which our society is dependent on cars.
