News |

Towing mistake leads to refund dispute; preparing for driverless cars

This is a tale of a tow that involves the Blackhawks, a toy bunny and a disputed refund. It points to things that can go wrong when you park in an outdoor lot on a busy weekend.

It also comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of towing services, with two license revocation hearings this week before the Illinois Commerce Commission, and offers lessons for avoiding trouble.

The story started on the morning of Sunday, July 17, when Patrick Kilcoyne, 57, of Oak Lawn, his wife and two small children who were friends of the family drove downtown for the Blackhawks fan convention.

Kilcoyne parked at a Park 1 lot at 328 S. Wabash Ave. There was a long line at the payment machine, which spits out receipts for drivers to put on their dashboards. A friendly attendant, seeing the kids, grabbed a book of receipts from inside the booth, took Patrick Kilcoyne’s $30 and wrote out a receipt by hand, with the car type and the last four digits of the license number, but without a time or date, Kilcoyne said. Kilcoyne stuck it on the dash.

At around 1 p.m., they returned to find both attendant and car gone. Everyone was upset, especially the kids, who had left toys in the car.

“I miss my bunny,” Kilcoyne recalled the 6-year-old boy saying, which got the 4-year-old girl wound up. Misery filled the muggy air.

Kilcoyne was unable to reach anyone at the lot but found out that his car had been towed by A-1 Citywide Towing. The children’s parents came to pick up the kids and Kilcoyne’s wife. Meanwhile, Kilcoyne had his son, who had just run a half-marathon, went with him to get the car in Avondale.

Kilcoyne said the A-1 dispatcher told him there was no receipt on the dash — he asked if she was sure and he wanted to see his car. She said he had to pay $172.50 first.

When he got his car back, he found the receipt where he had left it. He called A-1 twice — the second time he used a word that rhymes with “twitch” against the dispatcher. Both times, the dispatcher hung up on him.

Kilcoyne talked with Getting Around, who contacted managers at both Park 1 and A-1. They agreed that there had been a mistake. Kilcoyne had indeed paid to park, and attendants often use handwritten tickets on busy days, Park 1 employees confirmed. The A-1 driver incorrectly thought it was a phony and towed the car, said A-1 manager John Allan.

“The ticket on the dash was not what we were used to seeing,” Allan said.

Both Park 1 and A-1 offered refunds. Kilcoyne asked A-1 for an extra $100 for his trouble, and Allan responded by offering $200. But after Allan told Kilcoyne that all tow truck drivers take pictures of the cars’ dashboards before towing them, Kilcoyne became angry that he was told there had been no receipt, and asked for $300.

“He decided to become a horse trader,” Allan fumed.

Kilcoyne said he wants the extra money because he wants to compensate the children’s parents and his son. “Each of their lives was inconvenienced,” he said. As of this writing, the dispute had not yet been resolved.

There were a few issues here. Lot attendants aren’t always around on weekends, and no one answered when Kilcoyne called the phone number on the payment machine at the Park 1 lot — both Kilcoyne and Getting Around found it went to voicemail and calls were not returned. However, Kilcoyne, who admits to having been agitated, failed to see another number posted on the attendant’s booth, which would have linked him to a Park 1 employee.

Also, Kilcoyne said he was so aggravated that he did not want to go back to A-1 to dispute the charge in person once he found his receipt. Instead he called, and swore, and got hung up on.

Allan defended A-1’s reputation, which he said was good compared with other towing companies. Lincoln Towing Service and Rendered Services face losing their licenses at Illinois Commerce Commission hearings this week.

The ICC has seen about 900 complaints against A-1 in the last eight years, but in most cases no enforcement action was taken. No one likes to be towed, and that leads to a lot of complaints, said Allan, who noted that businesses depend on towing companies to keep out unauthorized cars.

“We’re a necessary evil, and that’s how it is,” he said.

So what’s the lesson for drivers?

If you get a handwritten receipt, make sure it’s filled out completely, with the time and date. Keep a copy with you. Make sure you have a phone number to call if there’s a problem. Make sure the receipt is visible and face-up on the dash and did not slip off when you slammed the door. If possible, take a picture of your dashboard.

When you pay for a tow, use a credit card if you can, so the money can be returned easily if you have a dispute.

If you have a problem with a towing service or a lot, dispute it promptly. If you can’t get it resolved, the ICC is the place to make a complaint about towing services.

And if possible in this weather, keep cool.

Driverless cars and liability

As this column noted earlier this month, the driverless car in your rearview mirror is closer than you think. By 2030, driverless cars will account for 15 percent of global sales, and 1 in 3 sales by 2050, according to a McKinsey & Co. study.

But most companies are not prepared for them, according to a survey by Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer.

A survey of more than 100 company risk managers at the Risk and Insurance Management Society conference in San Diego in April found that 64 percent said their companies had done nothing to prepare for the emergence of autonomous vehicles.

“We were a little bit surprised at the number of people who were not doing anything,” said Mike Scrudato, strategic innovation leader for Munich Re. Risk managers help companies decide how to buy insurance and prepare for problems.

He said Munich Re sees potential safety benefits in driverless cars, since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finds that 94 percent of accidents are caused by driver error. Munich Re wants risk managers to be aware of the developments in the technology and how it could improve safe transportation of both goods and people.

The survey also found that 55 percent of respondents felt that cybersecurity was the greatest insurance concern associated with driverless cars, followed by allocation of liability when driverless cars shared the road with regular vehicles, at 27 percent.

Nearly half of risk managers said regulatory or legislative obstacles posed the greatest challenge to widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles.

The NHTSA is expected to release guidelines on autonomous vehicles by the end of the summer.

Zipcar by the mile

And lastly, the car-sharing service Zipcar started a pilot program in Chicago this summer that allows users to pay by the mile, which could save money on shorter trips.

About 80 cars in the Zipcar network in Chicago can be used for “per mile” trips. Zipcar rates start at $8.75 per hour for a $70-a-year plan. Under the “per mile” model, you could pay $4.50 an hour, plus 50 cents a mile, which could work out cheaper if you’re only schlepping groceries from a store that’s a couple of miles away.

As discussed in this column last week, Zipcar faces competition from peer-to-peer car-sharing businesses like Getaround and Turo, which allow drivers to rent cars from private individuals, often for cheaper prices than Zipcar or conventional rental companies like Hertz.

Zipcar is trying the per-mile program in response to customer requests, said Kate Pope Smith, director of field marketing. Zipcar spokeswoman Lindsay Wester said Zipcar is the first car-share company to do this.

mwisniewski@tribpub.com

Twitter @marywizchicago