I recently had my vehicle towed by E & R towing (ie SWAT). It was illegaly removed from the parking lot of my community. My vehicle had been ordered removed by the HOA they were caliming that it was not registered and the tags were expired. However they never bothered to look in the rear window because if they had they would have realized that there was a 30 day temp. tag that did not expire until November. I awoke on a Sunday morning only to discover that my vehicle was not there in my parking spot. I immediatly called the police department to find out where it had been taken and I was given the number for E&R towing. I called them immediatly and spoke to a woman who was very rude and asked her if they had my vehicle there and I explained to her that there were temp. tags in the back window and that they had no right to take my vehicle, it was legal. she put me on hold for 20 mins. When she came back she said ""I'm sorry there are no tags on your vehicle"" I told her that she had better look again because I know they are there they were there last night when I parked it. She told me that there was nothing that she could do and that if i wanted it back that I would have to pay them 260 dollars. I immediatly went down to the tow yard and was told that i could go and look but I would not be allowed in my vehicle because it was the law. The person who took me back told me that they can't even get into any vehicles because it is the law. I proceeded to ask him are you part of the police department or a repo company? He replied NO. I proceeded to look for my tags and they were gone all that was left was a remnace of the paper were they had been torn from my window. I was so outraged that they had the nerve to take my temp tag out of my window that I went into a rage and told them that they had 5 min to release my vehicle and replace my sticker. They then preceeded to tell me that they would call the police if I did not calm down I told them go ahead because you stole my vehicle and i would press charges. The man in the lot told me that unless i paid 260 dollars that I would not get it back and that it would cost me an additional 25 a day to leave it there. He also told me that I would have to pay a 210 dollar fine because it was not legal to drive on the street and that if i got caught that it would be a 500 dollar fine but if I wanted to pay the 260 dollars they would let me have it back. I told him that i was not paying a 210 dollar fine and that i would pay the 260 dollars and that i would see them in court. Upon leaving the same person i had been speaking to said make sure you take off your emergency brake I had to put it on when we brought it in. I said to him I thought you were not able to get into the vehicles he had no reply. They calim they take pictures before they remove vehicles so i asked for photos because which I have yet to get. The moral of this story is tow companies need to be regulated so we the people do not have to be harrassed.
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