tonight there are calls for stiffer penalties for predatory tow companies following a story from the seven investigators on friday we first showed you how a redford company tried to charge one woman nine thousand dollars just to tow her suv a 9 000 charge that is a problem but is the solution to get government involved to make more laws so that that doesn't happen that is the question welcome back to here's the deal if you haven't done so already subscribe to the channel hit the bell notification icon give it a thumbs up and share it with everybody you know [Music] [Applause] now i felt it necessary to talk about this because within the body of this article and there is a grave injustice that's happening right here don't get me wrong but the knee-jerk reaction on this is we need to get government involved and they need to make more rules and policies and laws for the rest of us so this kind of stuff doesn't happen i'm going to i'm gonna go ahead and play this news report it's a nine thousand dollar towing bill prompts calls for stronger predatory towing laws in michigan and even in the body of the text they say that either even other tow truck companies are telling legislators that they need to create more laws to keep this predatory towing behavior at bay i wonder why that is listen to this tonight there are calls for stiffer penalties for predatory tow companies following a story from the seven investigators on friday we first showed you how a redford company tried to charge one woman nine thousand dollars just to tow her suv it was more than the cost of her vehicle guys the towing company arrives on the scene and just tows her car away there's no written or verbal agreement saying okay this is how much it's going to cost you do you agree to the terms of the conditions before we pick up your car this is why i'm calling this criminal activity because there was no written agreement and when you're holding somebody's property and the only way they can release their property and its damage property of that because she got involved in this this car pile up on this freeway but when you're holding somebody's property and you're basically telling them unless you give us this exorbitant amount of money you can't get your property that's criminal activity why because that tow truck company and the members thereof and the families that belong to that people that own that tow truck company would not want that happening to them this is a violation of the golden rule due to others which you would want done to you conversely don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you that makes it criminal activity after she was caught in a pileup on i-696 now experts say the tow should have cost less than 400 bucks and now even the towing industry is calling for changes to michigan law there you go the towing industry is calling for changes to michigan law guys this is basically the towing industry and other people who don't want to get scammed like this woman got scammed and i under believe me i understand the knee-jerk reaction but what they're basically saying is hey are you from the government we need your help the nine most terrifying words in english language are still i'm from the government and i'm here to help the the terrifying response is oh you're from the government we need your help guys a government that's big enough to give you everything you want will always be big enough and they'll make sure they're big enough to take everything you've got there is a free market answer to this problem right here we'll get to that in a minute 7 investigator ross jones with the very latest no way and no how can you justify nine thousand dollars after a lifetime in the towing industry bill byers thought he'd seen it all until he saw our story of a driver hit with an almost ten thousand dollar tow bill just to have her car towed a few miles have you ever done a bill like this in your life no no and that's that's just blatantly taking advantage of somebody just because they can since our story for yeah because they can i mean talk about being between a rock and a hard place this woman needs that minivan back so that she can go to her job so that she can make money and support her family but the the tow truck company won't release it unless she pays more money than she actually probably owes on the vehicle first aired we have been flooded with reaction on social media and emails from drivers with their own towing tales of woe and now the story has gotten the attention of michigan state police looking into what happened to kelly rockwell and perhaps other drivers stuck on i-696 kelly assumed that 10-g the tower that showed up quickly to the pileup was called their bi-state police but they weren't 10g wouldn't tell us how they arrived there but by the time they were done towing kelly's ford escape her twenty two hundred dollar tow bill had swelled to nine thousand forty eight dollars barry foster is the president of the detroit towers association a lot of these guys they they ride around with scanners in their trucks and they know that the accident happened so they're trying to get to that scene to see what's going on and beat the police authorized towards the scene companies like now that's that's alarming right there a police authorized tower why would the police why would state agents and functionaries work in concert with towing companies and as i understand it there's like a rotation schedule and correct me if i'm wrong uh gypsy's said um he worked for a towing company for 20 years but it seems to me that the state agencies are working with the tow company my question is and i don't have the answer to this do the tow companies give a percentage of the the impound fee and the towing fee and the profit that they make coming into their business does that go anywhere near the coffers of the state like does the police department benefit from those tow charges and those impound fees ng are the exceptions because if they do that sounds like a racket to me because it sounds like police are incentivized to have your your vehicle towed not only are they incentivized to have your vehicle towed they get to write the ticket the citation or whatever and then get with the towing company and have these police authorized towing companies and if because i don't know if a percentage of that towing fee and that impound fee that that customer has a you know forced customer has to pay for uh if a percentage of it goes to the police then i can see a monetary incentive for police to actually call a particular tow truck driver not the rule foster says but they're not the only bad actors in the business he says drivers in kelly rockwell's position should insist on using a tow company that's authorized by police they operate on a fee schedule that won't allow for ridiculous markups basically if you're not asking that that tour if he's a police authorized tour or a recommended company you're basically giving them an open checkbook after first trying to charge nine thousand dollars 10g later cut down the price to 2500. can you see the tow truck company by the way the tow truck company is called 10g towing and recovery and stay tuned because we're going to talk about this we're going to talk about the free market solution to this and it does not involve in any way get getting the legislative process and legislators involved and creating more laws which always always take away more freedoms and more wealth or at least sets up uh the power for a future more powerful state so it's called 10-g towing and can you imagine them sitting there going well i'll tell you what today and today only we're going to cut that we're going to reduce that forty eight dollars down to twenty five dollars i'm twenty five hundred dollars today and today only dialed before midnight tonight what about what a scam 10g later cut down the price to 2500 after we interviewed kelly her insurer progressive then agreed to pay what would you have charged for a tow like this somewhere around 350 400 bucks rockwell 350 400 bucks now it depends on where they're they are you towing it 20 50 miles in the ice in the snow it seems like there would be a sliding scale there it's like yeah we got to charge a little bit more right here because our tow truck driver took him a long time to get out there it was pretty torrential you know we did in the middle of a blizzard or whatever but 350 and 400 for a toast seems pretty exorbitant to me still i mean think about it i mean yeah they got to pay for their trucks and they got to pay for the insurance and they got to pay for the fuel and they got to pay for all this kind of stuff but 350 that that's a pretty good haul let's say it takes you let's see it takes you three hours to do that for 350 you're making about 115 bucks an hour that's that's pretty good that's that's pretty good cha-ching says uh raised by gypsies who how long were you a tow druck driver gypsies like 20 years i asked gypsies if it's true that there's some kind of kickback that the police department gets from the towing company for impound fees and and towing fees and he says uh it's been a racket that's been going on for a long time this is where the local masons come in and then he says under the under the table they do because i asked the police get a cut and he said under the table they do first you have to be a part of the the local freemasons is that right that would be an interesting investigation in and of itself i wonder if it's like that everywhere that would be very interesting because you got all these creepy windowless masonic temples all over the place and like if you're not in the brotherhood you don't get that scratch on your back that you really wanted ah that's this this can open up a whole bunch of can of worms that i am not you know stuff that i'm not privy to it was contacted by michigan state police who interviewed her about what happened right now in michigan it is illegal for tow companies to solicit drivers at the scene now as a as a potential tow truck driver i'd be looking at this going come on snow come on inclement weather all i'm seeing is 350 400 bills sitting out there on the road just waiting to be picked up and then you got this whole fleet of vehicles and like seven of you arrive on the scenes charging 350 to 400 a pop just laughing all the way to the impound lot of an accident but the fine for doing so is only a thousand dollars tonight barry foster and others say stories like this are evidence that the penalties should be more severe tonight a michigan state police spokesman says they do not believe 10g broke any criminal laws in this case reach by phone 10g decline comment it depends on what you want to define as a crime i mean it seems like if you're going to charge somebody that you didn't have an agreement with somebody has your property in their possession okay and they're not gonna give you your property unless you pay nine thousand freaking bucks how can you not see that as somebody being victimized clearly i mean this is like clear-cut clear-cut victimization now somebody could go well that's uh dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery but it's something that this tow truck company is doing to this woman that they wouldn't want done to them and they wouldn't want done to one of their fans they would be outraged if they if the tow truck driver found out that his girlfriend got her vehicle towed to another impound lot by another tow truck company and they weren't gonna release his girlfriend's car until she paid coughed up nine thousand dollars he'd be outraged he would feel victimized but he's going to do that to somebody else so so saying that there's not criminal activity just because somebody didn't break a law and now we need to have laws in place is just brain dead to me you're clearly taking advantage of somebody you're clearly charging them something you shouldn't be charging that you wouldn't want charge yourself you clearly victimized somebody and you you engaged in predatory towing so how do we correct this if not for making laws that keep this from happening guys laws won't keep this from happening there will be people out there breaking laws and still creating victims we've seen that time and time again but what you can do is this i did i did a google search for 10g t 10 g towing it's literally called and i looked it up under this this exact name and a couple of news unless the news got their name wrong or unless 10g towing changed their name or if they took down their um presence from the internet something is amiss because you can't find 10g towing in this in this part of michigan right here redford michigan and i'll show you that i've i've got the exact because you see their letterhead you see the invoice that they wrote this lady for nine thousand dollars i'll show you this in a second but if you look up 10g towing and you can see my my 10g towing and recovery in redford michigan and where i got that was this screenshot right here this is the actual road service um uh bill that they gave to this lady for nine thousand dollars it says 10g towing and recovery llc 26120 grand river avenue redford michigan four eight two four zero it's got the phone number so i looked up the right thing but you can't find it it's not it doesn't come up look you got you've got ktek north redford towing and transport did they change their name did they pull their presents off the internet because they got so many phone calls from this news article i don't know but you can't find it you can't find it on here but you know what you can't there's a1 towing i still i don't see 10g towing it's not in here so i wanted to look it up so we could get well we got the phone number but the free market answer to this is hey let's give buyers wrecker service our business or any other record service that has look they have a 4.8 star rating that's this guy right here let's see that's this guy that said i wouldn't charge that where is he where's this guy yeah there it is there's this record service guy so why don't we get the free market answer to this is hey 10g 10g towing and recovery needs to go out of business well how do we do that well if we ever need a tow truck we're going to make sure we get buyers or north red for towing let's see or page towing and recovery llc has 4.8 stars go with the heist that's what i like about the the google star rating can it be abused yeah uh can people like 10g towing and police departments erase negative feedback yeah that's probably not a good idea to keep that as an option on the table because you really want to see the positives and negatives so you can get a fully or view of who you're dealing with and who you might want to do business with or might not want to do business with so the free market answer to this is not um hey let's get legislators to make more laws that's always detrimental to society and increases state power so why don't we engage in a free market solution to this problem and that is hey let's go let's give buyer's record so he seems like a good guy and maybe we can talk him down from that say hey i saw you on the news and you wanted like 350 how about two 250 275 can we negotiate and businessmen will negotiate because you know what's better than making money having a good reputation in your society don't ask legislators to create more laws that one day will work oh it may work for you today but it may work against you tomorrow and criminals who don't like and obey laws they'll find a way around the law and they'll stick it to you even more so the answer to this is oh and another thing is too i actually looked up and what's funny about this is you can actually see this building i looked up this address you can see it right here 26120 west grand river avenue from this right here 26120 uh grand river avenue this is west grand river avenue but see this see this um this building right here where my mouse is hovering over you can see that that when they said that they tried to reach out to 10g towing they couldn't get in touch with them and they actually showed a little clip of that the front of that building you guys probably saw it i'd see i'm scrolling here to try to find it yeah i don't see it let's see dollars tonight barry foster and others say stories like this are evident tonight at michigan state tonight of evidence that the penalties should be more yeah i can't find it but it was the same image that they put up this this is possibly 10g towing but look you can't their name is not even on there their name is not even on there it's near mag motor sales on uh grand river avenue west grand river avenue so not sure what happened here with 10g towing if they just said hey you know what we're getting too many phone calls let's change our name let's take our our presence off the internet or whatever but uh looks like they're trying to they're trying to hide from the shame that they're getting because everybody knows it's wrong everybody knows you try to make a quick buck off of these victims here and that's that's another lesson here is always ask questions go okay hey did the police call you out here are you coming out here by yourself what is this going to cost me what are the terms of the agreement put that in writing never hurts to ask that what if you go screw you then i'm not going to tow your vehicle you can leave it here and rot for all i care it's like okay i'll make another call because you obviously have a lot of you have a lot of options in this town look at all the towing companies in this town there's a lot of options for towing companies that's the free market solution to something you don't want the government involved in your business you don't want them making more laws it makes you less free leave your thoughts about this i want to hear what you have to say [Music] you