I assume Ace Towing drivers work on commission.
Because, from direct experience, they mis-represented the options available to a AAA member. They mis-informed a customer about the true cost of their advice. They overcharged ($225) for what should have been a 4.4 mile tow service. And to add insult to injury, they make it very difficult (and expensive) to retrieve your vehicle after the tow service.
Details:
An officer onsite called Ace Towing Enterprises for towing my son's vehicle after an accident.
The tow truck driver argued with him and ultimately misrepresented the truth about the cost of towing the car home versus taking it back to his shop.
He was able to convince my son (20) that they would do a free estimates and taking it to their auto shop was the better choice since AAA would reimburse him to get it towed to the house after the estimate was done. It was explained to him as the lesser cost option...something fairly important to a student working part time.
Buyer beware:
That advice turned out to be wrong and deceitful. They towed it to a place where they charge $25/day for storage. The car should have been towed to his home as he requested more than once. Home was 4.4 miles away from the site of the accident. I'd guess $75 max.
It gets worse tho.
And I'm dealing with them right now: Getting the car out of storage before they charge my son. And the amount of red tape required to retrieve his property was about as hideous and painful to deal with as a trip to the DMV at the end of the month. The DMV at least has a website!
For payment and for ID purposes, they only accepted fax. Really? 2012 and you only accept a fax? OK -- so after receiving a fax of his driver's license, they tell us they couldn't read and thusly didn't accept as proof of his identity to retrieve his car. That's fair and understandable, BUT they didn't call back to tell us that...they just waited. Presumably, unmotivated to help a customer avoid that $25/day charge.
I suppose it probably would have been fine, if we wanted them to fix the car, or if someone else was paying these bills, but they seem to make money with under-handed back-alley tactics and take advantage of people when they are vulnerable.
If you have an option, call someone else. If you this group of buffoons arrive to help you when you need it most, don't trust anything they say...
Ace Towing = Charlatans
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