Getting towed outside of Portland

I was working for a client Thursday whose office building uses Retriever Towing to enforce their 2-hour limit on the parking spaces around the building (Cascade Square on Cascade Ave in Beaverton). They towed my car. I admit that I was there over the 2-hour limit, but I was very surprised to find out that to recover my car it cost $305!

It broke down like this:
$125 for a Class A hook fee
$20 for mileage ($5/mile for the tow to their impound lot, which according to Google maps was 3.9 miles)
$40 for the use of towing dollies
$35 for 1 day of storage (all of about an hour by the time got there)
$20 for photos (which protects them if someone claims they damaged their car)
$10 Fuel surcharge (AFTER charging $5/mile!)
$15 Dispatch fee (Because they don't pay to have someone at the impound yard)
$40 Gate fee (Basically I get to pay them to unlock the gate where they're holding my car hostage.)

Now the guy that released my car gave me a nice little sheet that broke this down for me, which if I’m reading correctly would have only cost me $158 or $179 (depending on if they held my car for more than an hour) if this had happened in the Portland City Limits because Portland has passed an ordinance to regulate this sort of thing.

Basically, if I read what they’re telling me with the paper they gave me with breakdowns on it, because the City of Beaverton doesn’t have any oversight on the use of Private Property Impound Rates, these tow companies can charge whatever they want for this “service.” And what they want to do is bend you over and not offer to use any lube.

I remember hearing about the Portland ordinance on local talk radio, and I'll be honest, I didn't pay much attention. I didn't really care about it. I do now.

I'm a bit conflicted about this. Private property owners have the right to do what they want. If they want to limit people to only park two hours in their parking spaces, they have that right. They have the right to enforce that limit by having your car towed if you stay to long. But I don't think they get to hold your car for whatever ransom the tow company thinks they can get away with.

But I am highly dependent on having my car to make my living. I do as much as I can remotely from my office or home, but there are times when I have to travel to my clients office to install something new, or make physical changes to their hardware or just let them know that I care that their business is important to me. I can't do this is some tow company is holding my car hostage for some outrageous fee.

I seem to recall when Portland passed that ordnance. I think Lars Larson did a whole day on it. I honestly don't remember what the position of the right was on it. I didn't really care. For the most part, I pay attention to posted parking limits, and take care to park where I know I won't be overstaying my welcome.

In this case, I was delivering a new printer and doing a quick check of their server. No way that takes more than two hours, three tops. If I hadn't had the printer, I would have parked across the street in the employee garage area anyway, because I try not to think of myself as "special" when visiting my clients, and respecting their customer parking areas is one way I doing that.

I overstayed because the client complained of a spam problem and had delayed installing the new version of their anti-virus/malware protection software because they elected to use our basic monitoring service and that doesn't include updates, but because I was there with the printer it was a good as time as any. Then it took forever to get them to test the reason they got the printer in first place.

I am by no means saying I wasn't there for more than two hours. It was closer to 5. So when I saw that my car had been towed, I wasn't too upset. I figured it would cost around $150 to recover. But when the actual cost comes out to over twice what I expect, I'm going to get a wee bit angry.

Hell, I could handle the $179 if they can show the car has been in the lot for more than an hour, but what I got nailed for is a bit excessive don't you think?

Now I think government needs to be as small as possible, but sometimes there needs to be rules to make sure people aren't getting taken totally to cleaners, don't you? I think the city of Portland has the right idea here.