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Tow Company Deflated Tires To Create Excuse For Accidental Tow After The Fact - Also Damaged Awd By Towing Without Dollies. Advice?

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Location: Utah

Tow company accidentally grabbed wife's car insisting that it didn't have a parking permit. When I told them it did, the excuse immediately changed to it having flat tires and being inoperable. Car had been driven only hours before and it nags us the second it's a few PSI off.

Got to the lot and car is sitting on all 4 rims in a gravel lot. Attendant shows up, we pay to at least stop the bleeding while we dispute, and I grabbed my air tank out of the van to fill the tires. Immediately noticed the valve stem cap is missing, and found it on the ground right next to the tire. Clearly, someone was messing with it in the impound lot.

I asked the attendant if they had tried airing up the tires, because if they did and they're already totally flat again, that's a big leak that I need to know about. He chuckled and said they don't do that. It's our responsibility to figure out how to get cars off the lot, not theirs, then immediately went back to trying to flirt with my wife (whose car he just towed... ????????‍♀️).

The car also threw a bunch of codes when I started it up, including for AWD. So I had our mechanic pull the codes and it looks like they didn't bother to use dollies on an AWD vehicle, despite lying on the paperwork to say they did. So they've now invalidated our warranty on a late-model car we're still making payments on.

Any suggestions for how to go about making sure they don't use this "excuse" on others in the future to fleece people out of tow fees? I doubt it was the first time or the last. The police don't seem interested and the city attorney only marginally so. We will be making a claim with our own insurance for the damage and diminished value. but would like to make sure this doesn't happen again.

submitted by /u/Amaranth_and_Ash
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