Towing agencies in Asheville will now have to accept Master Card and VISA; provide 24-hour service with prompt response times; keep storage lots well-groomed with good lighting; file police reports for non-consensual towing – and the threat of municipal licensing is looming.
The problem started when tourists started parking in private lots with signs threatening to tow unauthorized vehicles. Property owners who posted the signs had their reasons, and followed through on the warnings. Some angry tourists retaliated by paying the towing companies with cancelled checks and stopped credit card payments. The towing companies retaliated by requiring payments in cash. The tourists appealed to government, and city council just tried to approve an ordinance requiring towing companies to do business with Master Card and VISA (who no doubt earned their legislated privileges over Discover and American Express). In an hour or so of purgatory, council performed precision computational analysis to determine the exact values needed for escalating fine scales. To no avail, one lowly citizen tried to explain that whatever government did, people would destroy his parking signs and park in his lot anyway.
Back in the day, one would suppose the property owner would have recourse, without extra legislation, for dealing with trespassers. One would even suppose that extra legislation would not be necessary to deal with fraudulent payments. One wouldn’t increase the cost of operating a towing business because tourists wanted to park on others’ private lots. One would suppose with all the actuarial prowess on council, somebody would notice a correlation between the number of listings on the Federal Register and crime rates.
