I have so many questions about all of this.
I'm going back through relevant posts (not exactly a wealth of information, but I get the gist of it). One question I have is what the value of the car was. It almost sounds as though Impound Bob was selling you your car back after placing a lien on the title.
Apologies for possibly asking what you've already answered. I just want the record to be clear here.
1. Did the value of the car approximate the impound release amount?
2. Do you know if a lien was actually placed on the car's title?
3. Were your license plates removed from the vehicle while it was in storage?
4. If so, were they ever recovered?
5. Were your official documents removed from the car? IDs, "legal documents", etc.?
6. If so, were they ever recovered?
7. Did your insurance agent ever reimburse you as stated for the storage fees?
8. Have you retained all receipts from all transactions related to this incident?
9. Did Impound Bob give you a receipt?
10. Are you currently in possession of the vehicle?
11. Is Impound Bob registered with any agency, authority, or bureau?
12. Do you know of anyone else who has transacted with Impound Bob?
13. Did the police respond to the accident?
14. If so, do you have a copy of the report?
15. If so, have you addressed any of this with the police, including whether they are aware of what you were charged by the impound lot?
16. Why did Impound Bob respond to the accident? Was he called by the City?
17. If so, is he registered with the City? Has he filed any paperwork with anyone at all?
18. Does Impound Bob's entity have a name?
19. Does he have a registered agent?
My car was involved in TWO car accidents in one week. First one my brother was driving, avoided a deer, slid off the road, hit a tree the ONLY fire hydrant within 10 miles (and then got sent to NYC the same day for Hurricane Sandy relief). Then my heat died, and while trying to get to the place for the part to fix it I hit a car with broken tail lights (dark, it was snowing out, they had no running lights, country road).
My insurance company totally hung me out to dry. Put up a huge fight on sending a appraiser dude for the first accident, absolutely refused to cover the second one because a full month after it happened they determined it was totaled out by the first accident. Told me to cover storage fees out of pocket and they would reimburse me when I brought receipts to agent, never paid them out. Refused to stop billing me until 5 months later for the already totaled car. Lost all my IDs, legal documents etc. Kept them in car because I was being asked to show them to a lot of people, all the time.
The thing that killed me with the car is that I had to use the totaled out money directly to pay off storage fees. It was $400 per day for almost solid month. I ended up owing money more than the total value of the car post fees. I thought the Agent that you sign up with had a bit of independent decision making skills with stuff but turns out most of them have zero autonomy, once you go into the claims process it's handled by the main company which are hugely non responsive and just bleh.
County government?
Here's how it works (this is normally covered by your insurance btw, for me because of the double accident they decided not to).
1) You get into an accident.
2) The Village, Town, County, State, gets a wreckage crew out there to clean off the road.
2a) Your insurance company contacts them directly to have it brought to their facility.
2b) Just kidding.
3) The wrecker company who has the local contract puts title lien against the car for "storage."
4) You cannot transfer the title with an outstanding lien on it.
5) To complete the totaling process you have to transfer your title to the insurance company.
5b) When your license plates go missing in the wreckage yard the state suspends your drivers license and starts charging you a daily fee until they are returned or you file an obscure piece of paperwork at a very specific office which none of the employees have ever seen before whereupon you sit for 5 hours while they call the legal adviser for your entire half of the state.
I actually didnt check before. =/
"Except as otherwise provided, charges for storage of vehicles shall
not exceed fifteen dollars for each twenty-four hours or fraction
thereof for the first three days of storage and seventeen dollars for
the fourth day of storage and each day thereafter."
=/ Now I just feel like sh*t. It was at some residential house and they would ONLY take cash. They had my car before I even got home. I didnt sign anything, and the Police signed the tow
authorization. I got hit with administration fees (per day), per mile tow fees (it was about 50 miles from the accident), then storage fees, repair fees to make it towable etc.
Yeah, Im actually calling my uncle to see if there's anything I can do about this now.
It was totally just some guys house, he had a couple wrecks in his backyard and a tow truck parked out front.
It was $11k something in the end. I was afraid of them coming after me in court because I had no transportation and consequently no way to get to work or anywhere =/