:mad:
HELP ME SEND A MESSAGE TO MY APARTMENT MANAGERS!!!
I walked out to put stuff in my car today & my car was GONE!
“OMG, my car was stolen!” was my first thought…but after calling the office & getting their answering service I found out management had it towed.
I just renewed my lease YESTERDAY
& then they towed my car away just a few hours later!!! :smack:
It wasn’t even in anyone’s way.
The people upstairs moved out last month & their spot has been EMPTY for a month.
It is right next to my assigned spot, but easier to get out of, so
I parked there yesterday & they had my car towed!
Please suggest fairly legal (or anonymous) ways to…tell them how I feel.
I’m out a $100 bucks!
It may not even be the fault of the apartment managers, not directly, anyway. It depends upon how they do parking enforcement. A lot of places simply contract with a towing company, and tell the tow guys that they can tow any car that doesn’t have the right sticker on the window, or who’s parked in the wrong space. The tow guys make their money by cruising the lot, looking for pigeons. So, the apartment managers probably didn’t “have” your car towed, exactly - they probably didn’t actually pick up the phone and call the tow guys.
I think that a polite but firm conversation with the apartment manager is in order. No need to threaten or get hysterical. Just make it plain that, as a rent-paying, non-problem-causing tenant, you don’t expect to have your car towed, and that you expect them to reimburse you for the cost.
It may be tempting to deduct the $100 from your next rent check, with a copy of the towing bill attached, but I’d advise against it. It would just be construed as a lease-breaking failure to pay rent, and would probably lead to a spiraling battle. Not worth the $100, IMHO.
Oh, and if the polite but firm conversation doesn’t work, just start relieving yourself in one of the hallways, preferably not too close to your own apartment. It won’t get your $100 back, but it’ll make you feel better.
Well maybe you can get them to be nice about it if you are polite, but essentially you are asking for a pass when you broke the rules, even if you determined there was an eminently practical reason for doing so. People are very anal about parking spots in apartment complexes and managers have to police this situation fairly rigorously. If the situation is as you described you screwed up, and you have no business asking anyone to reimburse you.
Yes, astro
technically I was in the wrong. :rolleyes:
And it may be that I won’t be reimbursed for the $100 I had to pay to get my car back.
But there are PLENTY of vacant covered parking spots all along the row where I park & there have been throughout the holidays.
It makes no sense to have towed my car, except as a legalistic example.
And Early Out, true, mgmt may not have called, but it’s hard for me to imagine that tow companies just go tooling around complexes.
And tenants don’t have parking decals.
How about just so I’ll feel better,
can any of you dopers suggest how to make my case with mgmt.
or creative ways to show how much I care?
My parents’ townhome complex has a towing company contracted that is free to tow any car with expired tags. Even if it’s a working vehicle (not stray junked out cars) they will type up a notice that if you don’t get the tags on your car updated, they will tow it.
I fail to see the logic here; the apartment complex doesn’t work in any way for the DPS, and it can only serve to piss off tenants.
(The reason we know this is because my brother’s tags expired, and he didn’t have the money immediately to update them, so he let 'em lag a couple of months. The management was immediately up his ass about it.)
I have absolutely no clue as to what the deal is with this, or why the management would feel the need to risk losing tenants over this absurd policy.
Because there are more tenants where they came from. People who are in the middle of a lease aren’t going to move out because they’ll lose their deposit if they do, and new people moving in rarely think to ask about the towing policy before they sign. Besides, it’s so common that a lot of people just accept it as part of the deal.
My best friend used to be in property management and I worked with her for one summer, so I’ve seen it from the other side. Management companies frequently contract with towing companies, giving them free rein to prowl the grounds looking for towable cars. They do this for a number of reasons. One is to keep the property looking nice by getting rid of junker cars; this also ties in with keeping parking spaces open by not allowing non-operational vehicles to park there for extended periods of time. If they have a decal system, that has to be enforced. You would not believe the number of complaints the office gets from residents whining about other people’s cars and parking. So they just adopt a zero-tolerance policy. Being in property management means you are going to have people pissed off at you no matter what you do, so a lot of them don’t give a shit.
First, it’s one way to make sure that people don’t chew up parking spaces by storing vehicles there that aren’t actually being used. This only makes sense, of course, if parking is tight in that complex, and if spaces aren’t assigned to specific apartments or townhouses.
Second, it’s a quick way to make sure that they don’t end up with junk cars crapping up the parking lot. Deciding when a vehicle is a “derelict” gets the complex management into debates with the owner of the vehicle - it’s much easier just to proclaim that all cars parked there must have a current registration, inspection sticker, etc.
Finally, in some jurisdictions, it’s against the law for a property owner to store an unregistered or uninspected vehicle on the property if it’s a residential area. This is done to keep people from turning their yards into auto repair shops or graveyards, but in theory, the townhouse complex owners or homeowners’ association (which holds the title to the “common” ground, like the parking lots) could be ticketed for allowing an unregistered or uninspected vehicle to remain on the property.
What bugs me about the whole assigned-space business is that, almost everywhere I’ve seen it, it creates a shortage of parking spaces where none would otherwise exist.
I’m sure there are apartment/townhouse/condo complexes which would get parked up by outsiders, and residents wouldn’t be able to find parking, if there were no assigned spaces. But practically everywhere I’ve seen this practice, that hasn’t been the case.
First time I saw this in the DC area was in a friend’s complex in N.Va. in the early 1980s. There was never a problem finding spaces in that complex, at any time of day, night, or weekend, until they put numbers on the spaces. From then on, though, I had to park out in the proverbial BFE when I dropped in on him, and walk by dozens of numbered, unoccupied spaces, on my way to his door. (There were a couple of nearby unassigned spaces, and they were always occupied.)
And practically everywhere I’ve seen it since, same deal. If there were no assigned spaces, tenants might not always be able to park right in front of their doors, but they’d almost always be able to park within 8-10 spaces. And visitors would have somewhere to park as well.
When I was helping Opalcat move into her current place, it took me forever to find a legal place to park - and when I did, it was completely outside the complex. But empty, numbered spaces were abundant. Don’t residents of these places have friends that visit? Aren’t they bothered when their friends can’t park? Don’t they ever complain to the HOA about that? It’s insane. I’m glad I live in a neighborhood where parking isn’t an issue.
Just speculating on a possible rationale…the management may have wanted to avoid a situation where they’re showing the upstairs apartment to prospective tenants and saying ‘well normally you’d have your own assigned space, not sure why someone’s parked in it now’. I know if it was me and I saw that my neighbor was going to be parking in my spot before I even moved in, I wouldn’t move in. Have you parked there before? They could have at least given you a warning. Did they? If not, I would go that route. Maybe give them a note saying, hey I’m sorry I parked in the wrong spot, but asking me to move before towing would have been considerate, now I’m out $100. See what they say. Personally, I’d just suck it up and pocket the lesson.
Oh great…so I guess I just need to chalk this up
to another valuable expensive lesson.
Someone mentioned to me that I have three business days to rescind my agreement for any contact I sign.
But I see through Google searches that this might not apply to apartment leases.
(And Early Out I didn’t mean to be snide; I just had to engage in denial for awhile that tow companies went looking for cars to tow where I live.)
So I was at fault, I got my ass quickly wiped for me…
Are there any fun ways to show my appreciation?
As someone who regularly has neighbours taking her parking spot and a real estate agent who will do nothing about them I have to cheer for the towing. Sorry.
I do not own a car but I do pay for an assigned space and I expect that space to be available whenever a friend of mine may want it. I am told by them they will always move if I tell them I have someone coming (which hasn’t always proved to be true, they have been known to not answer the door) but why the hell should I have to inform my neighbours when I am having visitors? Do I have to tell all potential drop ins not to come without giving me enough notice for my neighbours? I have the opposite view, they should come clear it with me if they wish to borrow my space. It is mine to lend, not theirs to take.*
If your management company has to listen to bitches like me who after a couple of years of this have become quite irrational all day, no wonder they are becoming pro-active
Park in your own bloody spot, rent the other apartment if you prefer theirs. Apologise to the management for being a parking prick and never do it again.
*I may not be so concerned if 2 of the cars most likely to be in my spot were not driven by folks with disabilities who should not have to park miles away, they do not at the mall where there are handicapped spaces, why should they at my home? I also have a flaky back and sometimes need assistance with getting to doctors and shopping etc. I can’t walk too far when that happens. I take parking very seriously.
When 5pm hits, though, ALL the spaces fill up. We need more visitor parking, EVERYONE agrees… we all get horribly frustrated by it… but the reserved parking we have is necessary and fully used.
You know, I’ve lived in the same apartment complex for 4 1/2 years, with parking stickers and no assigned spots… and I’ve still been towed twice, even though I had current stickers and everything. My thinking is just that some of the guys who drive these tow trucks haven’t the sense God gave an eggplant. Astonishingly, the managers were always very helpful in dealing with the vagaries of tow truck drivers who can’t read the parking stickers.
