Erin Brockovich-ing

So on our way to Washington we stopped and spent the night at a hotel in Troutdale, Oregon. Josh parked our moving truck and his car in a seemingly abandoned field next to the hotel as it is kind of hard to manuever a 16 foot truck with car trailer into a parking spot. We got in at midnight and woke up at 6 am to find... no truck and no car. It turns out we were towed during the night. We got towed at 4 am and called the towing company at 6 am, they charged us for two vehicles, so for two hours they ended up charging us $630. Almost more than it cost to rent the truck! Now as infuriating and irritating as that is, I am not one to complain if I am in the wrong and am at fault (or I guess Josh would have been at fault) but the sign they put up in this abandoned, half paved, unlit lot was the size of a postage stamp and completely unlit. It was impossible to see, especially in the middle of the night!

Visual proof-

Can you even see the sign? Probably not...

For some reason this just really rubbed me the wrong way. Aside from being annoyed at my loss of money, I get really irked at businesses that profit on preying on other people. Really, you can't find an honest way to make money so you have to take advantage of people instead? What if someone had been towed from there without another vehicle to get them to the impound lot? What if someone didn't have the money to get their vehicle out and it just sat there racking up charges? The whole experience with this demon company really lit a fire under me and I decided to become Erin Brockovich. I mean look at this article. What a nice company.

After hours of research and complaining to everyone I could think of, the company itself, the Federal Trade Commission, the Better Business Bureau, government employees in three different Portland area cities- I have come to discover that while Portland and other suburbs have signage regulations for tow companies, maximum chargeable fees, and other regulations, the city of Troutdale, where we were towed, has no such thing and these vultures take total advantage of it. We were charged much more than the maximum allowable fees in these other cities. After e-mailing the mayor, the city manager, each city council member, and the planning department, I have been invited to present my recommendations to the city council in two weeks. And you better believe I am hauling my baby four hours roundtrip to Troutdale to do anything I can to help create laws to regulate these jerks. And you better believe I am making my city planner husband write me an ordinance. And you better believe it is going to get passed and it's going to be called Paige's Law. And you better believe that people will send me fan mail for the rest of my life. And you better believe they're going to make a lifetime movie about me.