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D.K. And Tree Podcast
When Virginia Takes Your Car and Your Wallet
Roadside breakdowns happen to everyone, but they're not supposed to empty your wallet. In this raw and candid episode, I share my recent nightmarish experience with Virginia's predatory towing practices that turned my daughter's flat tire into a $500 ordeal.
When my daughter called around 10 PM with a flat tire in Fredericksburg while traveling from North Carolina to Baltimore, I immediately drove down to help. After discovering her brand-new tire had completely failed, I left to purchase a replacement—only to return less than an hour later to find her car completely gone. What followed was a middle-of-the-night odyssey that exposed the lucrative business model seemingly designed to prey on stranded motorists.
The financial breakdown was shocking: $275 for towing, $75 for "storage" (despite the car being there for barely two hours), $25 for the gas used by the tow truck, and most outrageously, $125 just to open the gate to access the impounded vehicle. Even more disturbing was the realization that if I couldn't pay immediately, daily storage fees would have continued accumulating, potentially doubling the already exorbitant cost.
This episode serves as both a personal catharsis and a crucial warning for anyone traveling through Virginia: always use the right shoulder if you break down, never the left, as it's automatically "deemed a hazard" and subject to immediate towing. My experience highlights how vulnerable travelers can be exploited in moments of distress, and why we need to share these stories. Have you experienced similar predatory practices on the road? Share your story and help others avoid the same expensive lesson I learned.
Thank you All right, good afternoon, good afternoon, good afternoon everyone. Hey, I haven't been on here in a minute. I said let me come over here and say hello to everybody and just see how everyone's doing. It's your boy, damon, and I'm here with the DK Entry Podcast. Uh, yeah, yeah, story time. That's definitely story time. So you know when things happen, if things go on, I like to come and talk about it. So here's today's gossip, today's little gossip the Commonwealth of Virginia. Yeah, I'm definitely about to get on y'all brothers, because what y'all did to me, yeah, y'all got me, y'all got me road.
Speaker 1:And she's coming home from North Carolina to Baltimore. Right, she gets a flat tire down in Fredericksburg, right, ok, it's like 10 o'clock at night. You know, say, she called me. I say do you have a spare tire? No, I don't have a spare tire. Ok, dad's on the way. You know, drive down there and whatever tires completely blown out, hey, out. I'm like, hey, when did you get this tire? And she was like I got it yesterday. I picked the rim up, the whole tire falls off the car. I'm like, oh, this was a bad tire, but that's okay, it's perfectly fine, we got this. So, as I start calling around trying to find tire places down there. Well, nobody has a 24-hour tire shop, nowhere down there.
Speaker 1:So, of course, what I have to do, I got to come back up the road. So I come back up the road. So I'm like, okay, jacked the car up, took the tire off. I tried to put my spare tire on. Wouldn't fit. Ah, whatever, hey, it was worth a shot, right? So come back up the road, call the place. Hey, look, do you have any tires for this size? Yes, all right. Ooh, I'm on my way.
Speaker 1:Drive up the road, take the tire, get a new tire. Okay, beating it on back down here to Fredericksburg. Okay, so get back down here and I loop around and I'm looking. I'm like, well, wait a minute. I know the car was like right around in here somewhere. So I said, all right, well, let me go back, loop around, go down a little bit further where I originally got off and come back. So I do that, come back. The car's not there.
Speaker 1:I'm like, where is the car? I said I know it was up in here somewhere. So get on the phone, call the police. And hey, you know I was. I said there was a car, broke down, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:I said, you know, we went to change tires. Oh, we towed it. I said what man? It was on the shoulder? Oh, we deemed the left shoulder as a hazard, so it was towed. Wow, okay, now here's where the tomfoolery is starting to come in.
Speaker 1:Now, the tomfoolery, it's always tomfoolery. So now that the tire they done towed the car with three tires, now we got a problem. Okay. So now you're going to drug the car. Ah great, so they took my jack, right, I'm glad I took the lug nuts. So now they're giving me information on tow truck people, right, I call the people. Hey, look, you towed this car. I'm just trying to see if I can get the car back. Look, my daughter's traveling from North Carolina to Maryland. Look, we really need to get the car. It's 3 o'clock, it's about 2, 3 o'clock in the morning, trying to get this stuff done because she needs her car, right, cool. So the guy was like okay, I'll meet you there in like 35, 40 minutes. All right, no problem. So we go over to the tow lot and wait for the guy. The guy gets there.
Speaker 1:Now this is where the tomfoolery really started. So the guy over the phone told me say hey, man, you know, 400 for everything, all right, no problem. So well, when I get there to the lot, this guy right, he says no, no, no, that's not the price, no, no, the price will be this. But let me, let me break down to you the price of everything. This is the price, okay? So they charged me 275 dollars for a tow charge. They charged me 75 dollars for storage. Then they charged me 2525 for gas. Right For them to come pick up the vehicle. Then they charged me $125 to open the gate, to get the car. Seat right here, seat right here.
Speaker 1:What kind of games are y'all playing down there, taking people's money? I wasn't even gone, probably an hour, and you came that fast, towed the car and now I gotta pay five hundred dollars, five hundred to get this car of impound at about three o'clock in the goddamn morning. So that's the way y'all just gouge people. Somebody break down, you just tow their car and then that that's how virginia's making all this money. Oh, oh no, oh no, no. I'm dead serious. I got the proof right here. I am dead serious. I am dead serious.
Speaker 1:What they just did to me, virgin Virginia bent me over with no grease, none. Like I said I wasn't even gone an hour to go out here just to get my daughter off the side of the road and try to get a new tire and then put it back on there and they bent me over like that. So, total, that night I spent about $600 because remember I still had to pay for the tire, went back down there and now I had to pay a damn impound fee. But again, let me break the prices down to you for people to not heard it. Virginia towed my daughter's car, right, I hate them too. Towed my daughter's car. They charged me $275 for the tow charge, $75 for storage, $25 for gas Right, because they had to reuse that gas to come out, and then $125 to open up the gate. We do the same in Baltimore City too. I work for.
Speaker 1:That's some bullshit. Yeah, you know, here's my thing. You are gouging people for money. And then what if somebody don't have their money? What if I did not have the money to get my daughter's car? So you telling me you would have been charging me storage fees every day? Now, this 500 I paid would have been a damn thousand. Yeah, absolutely, commonwealth States of BS. Oh, you talk about somebody that was livid that night. I was livid, but that was for my child and it didn't matter, because my child needed a car, because she has to go back up and down this road and what she was coming here for was her brother's graduation, so that was more important than anything.
Speaker 1:So my thing with it is again, virginia, let me see, and in the city, if you have to pay for them before they release it, yeah, they do that. Down here also, they do it down this way also. So if you got any tickets or anything like that, yeah, you definitely have to pay. So here's my thing. You know, this is a. It seems like it's a lucrative business. Oh, yeah, not only are we going to charge you to pick it up, we're going to charge gas for it. Yeah, now it's behind that lock. You know, we're going to charge you to do this too.
Speaker 1:Exactly, you know, like I said, if it wasn't that for my child, it probably would have played out differently. Okay, played out differently. But you know, I had to put that nice little smile on because this man came out at three o'clock in the morning to do this and he wasn't happy about it, trust me. But I said hey, man, sir, please. I said my daughter needs her car. I said we cannot come back down here at eight o'clock in the morning. I said is there anything we can do to work out? I had to be that humble because if I wasn't that humble, guess what he would have did man, screw you, I'm not coming out there tonight to give you this car.
Speaker 1:So you know, sometimes just got to bite the bullet and bite the tongue a little bit because, trust me, I was cussing on the inside Because I was like, wait a minute, how much? But wait, wait, wait, wait. I forgot to say this one. He said if I had a credit card, it was an extra $25. What kind of bullshit is that? Like I said, this is a lucrative, lucrative business. Okay, yeah, I just wasn't happy about it.
Speaker 1:I wasn't happy about the whole thing and I said I definitely wanted to come on here and talk about this one. Virginia got me it's all good, it's all good, it's all good. Virginia, you got me on that one but, like I said, it was for my daughter, it was for my child. You make sacrifices for your children. But I tell you, just like this, va, you won't get me again. I promise you that Next time, if anything happens, I'll bring a tow truck with me. Uh no, you won't get me like that again, because that was out of control and ridiculous.
Speaker 1:The way they got me that time of the morning and I was like this is how they get people, huh. So you just tow somebody's car and again, I wasn't even gone an hour, I wouldn't even go an hour because I was looking for tire places down there. Just couldn't find one. But guess what? They found me and they got me too. Okay, virginia, you got me on that one, you got me. But I guarantee you you won't get me again.
Speaker 1:But anyone that drives through virgin, please use the right shoulder, not the left shoulder, because they deem that a hazard. So make sure, if something happens, go to the right shoulder. Ok, and go over there. As a matter of fact, just call and say hey, I'm broke down, I'm waiting for someone. I may have to leave my vehicle, I'm waiting for someone I may have to leave my vehicle. And hopefully they don't tow your vehicle away, because the way they scooped up and got that car, I thought I was going to crazy.
Speaker 1:When I was looping around looking for the car, I said wait a minute, I know the car is around here somewhere. It's got to be. Cars don't disappear. Oh yeah, they took that one. They wasn't even playing. I said, okay, oh yeah, they took that one and they wasn't even playing.
Speaker 1:Okay, but that's my two set, that's my soap opera box for that, and I got the proof right here to prove it again. I wish I had a picture of the tire to show you. I don't know where my daughter got that tire from, but I wish I had a picture. But again, if you, driving through that good old common of Virginia, okay, please, please, if you're break down, use the right shoulder, because if you use the left it's deemed as a hazard and they're probably going to tell your cop you're leaving. So that's my two cents. I'm glad whoever tuned in. Thank you for your comments, thank you for listening. Again, that's my little soap opera for today. But uh, hey, listen, you know, when I have things I like to talk about, I come on here, I share with y'all. But yeah, but I I'm gonna say this and then I'm gonna get off. My last thing virginia, screw you. So all right, y'all have a good day.
