Kadner offers legislative lesson
Monday, Feb 5, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller
On Friday, Southtown columnist Phil Kadner wrote a long and excellent column about tow-truck scams.
“These chasers — that’s what we call these tow truck companies — monitor police calls and will usually target car owners who have insurance with State Farm and Allstate,” said the owner of a south suburban auto body shop who asked not to be identified.
According to car owners, body shop operators and legitimate tow truck operators, these “chasers” often will use a “solicitor” driving an unmarked car to make the initial approach to motorists at accident scenes.
The solicitor is a friendly fellow who acts as though he just stumbled on the accident scene while driving by.
“He makes sure the car involved is a newer model or a luxury car because they don’t want to haul an old junker to the yard and get stuck with it,” said the owner of a tow truck company who feels the “chasers” are giving the industry a bad name.
“Typically, the solicitor will initially ask if the driver is all right and then say something like, ‘You’ve got insurance, don’t you?’ And then he will ask for the name of the insurance company.”
The solicitor promises to take the car anywhere the owner wants, to his home or an auto body shop, but the car almost always ends up in the tow truck company’s lot.
To retrieve the car, someone’s going to have to pay more than $1,000 — cash only.
But Kadner also quoted someone in Lisa Madigan’s office saying that they couldn’t control how much the vultures could charge.
Today, Kadner has another column, which shows how difficult it can be to pass any real consumer protections in this state.
Tow truck operators who charge $1,000 are “criminals,” “the lowest form of humanity” and “just awful people.”
Those are the words of Bill Howard, president of the Illinois Professional Towers and Recovery Operators, an organization that represents the towing industry.
He claims his association is working on the problem of pirate tow truck firms that chase automobile accident scenes, promise car owners a free tow and often end up charging more than $1,000.
But…
I’m told the insurance companies actually tried to get a tougher tow truck law passed in Illinois a few years ago. The tow truck industry association killed it, I was informed.
It’s always easier to kill a bill than pass one, unless the bill doesn’t do anything. And, even when a bill does pass, there is often an inverse relationship to the number of votes a bill gets and what it actually does. The more votes, the less impact.
- VanillaMan - Monday, Feb 5, 07 @ 9:19 am:
Wwe can only regulate what our legislators legislate us to regulate. While it is true that the ICC has some regulations in this industry, it is restricted by locations within a region of Illinois. To expand it further would require a mandate to do so from the Governor or the General Assembly.
What we currently have is probably the worst of both regulated and unregulated worlds regarding towing. To have gotten this far, required strict conditions on who, where and what is regulated so that it could pass the Assembly. To expand it would be meeting the spirit behind the intention of the towing regulations currently enforced by the ICC. We are at a point where this should happen since so much of the legal work has already been done, and now it could be expanded to cover currently unregulated relocators within Chicagoland.
Kadner’s columns are very good and should help spur discussions over the issue. However, as noted in his columns, those being excessively overcharged are not often aware, nor concerned over these charges, due to their insurance coverage. To change this situation, State Farm and Allstate will need to put pressure on Blagojevich, since the ICC is under the governor. The ICC could start discussions regarding the relocation towing industry if the Governor so desires it. Blagojevich selects the commissioners and chair of the ICC, and those he has selected owe him some fealty after the reverse auction snafu.
So, the pressure should be applied to Blagojevich, in my opinion, not Madigan. He can more easily expand the ICC to cover all Chicagoland relocators since the commission works for him.
- Rich Miller - Monday, Feb 5, 07 @ 11:26 am:
I knew it would be tough to attract comments to this post, particularly after last week’s disastrous consumer complaints post that got just 3. I didn’t think it would be this light, however. Another lesson learned.
- Chitownguy - Monday, Feb 5, 07 @ 12:20 pm:
State law should require signed disclosures of the cost when the car is towed from the scene. IF the driver is incapacitated or not at the scene of the accident then there should be some type of reasonable standard charge.. No. $1000 is not standard $200-250 tops. Many of these towing companies are vultures from my experience of living in Chicago.
- Anon from BB - Monday, Feb 5, 07 @ 1:36 pm:
My insurance company has a cap on towing costs. Anything over the cap I have to pony up. I think you’d hear a lot more about this if State Farm and Allstate and other insurance companies wouldn’t cover $1000.00 tows.
- Towing Professional - Monday, Feb 5, 07 @ 2:47 pm:
I agree that 1000 is excessive for these tows, but we do not need the legislature getting involved as they do not always consider all of our expenses. Every vehicle we get “stuck” with is an expense to us, and no there is not enough of a market to get our actual costs out of the junk. There is a law that owners who abandon their vehicles can not renew their license, but this requires either the local police agency and the local States attorney to file charges. In central IL there are very few willing to participate. The agravating thing is that this process is very simple for the agencies and require very little information beyond the title search and the police reports. On the other hand, private companies are required to hire an attorney and proceed through normal lawsuit channels, which will get the same results, but if there is no money, we are out the cost of litigation.