Advanced Towing Company

Dreadful experience. Absolutely the worst customer service EVER. Worst staff EVER.
My car was towed within 4 minutes. They lied and said it was 15 minutes, then they flipped it and accused me of lying. We saw the guy doing it and everything and several people tried to prevent the tow including someone banging on the tow truck to make him stop. He did not stop.
We had to pay $ 135 bucks. What took less than 3 minutes to tow away, took over an hour and 15 minutes to pay and wait to retrieve the car.
Oh, it get’s worse. There were two women working there. One was mediocre. The second was was horribly rude. She ate fried rice while we were talking with her trying to figure out next steps to retrieve the towed car. While she chewed and ate the fried rice, she talked with food in her mouth! Never making eye contact but said she was listening, shuffling papers. Did nothing to show she was paying attention. Answering phone calls repeatedly without excusing herself, continued to answer the phones and helped people on the phone rather than helping me. Typically you excuse yourself to answer the phone, then say can you hold please? and proceed to help who is directly in front of you. No, we had to wait while she answered over four — five phone calls. She even took a personal phone call and closed the sliding window while we, paying customers were forced to wait, and wait and wait. She was talking and giggling on a personal call. Completely lacked social graces, argumentative, impatient, short and snappy answers, inattentive, distant, not engaged, and intimidating. She would make an excellent prison guard in a maximum security prison. I’m not exaggerating.
I get that nobody wants to have their car towed, however they need to have people that are more pleasant working there and train their people up. They’re not law enforcement, but act as though they believe they are. Very strange, awkward, most unsettling experience I’ve ever had to go through with a business in years.
Tacky customer service. They made it clearly evident that they do not care about the customer, only your cash.

they attempted to tow my car, but i got there before they could hook it up. when i began to drive off the driver of the tow truck came from behind me and pulled his car in front of me. he got out if his truck and told me i had to pay him $ 25 if i wanted to leave. are they allowed to do that? this happened in the parking lot of the condo i own.

Apparently, the devil wears jorts, and wears a ball cap turned backwards. I went to pickup my truck from these guys, paid in cash and the chunky girl working the counter didn’t have change? I get out to my car and the tow truck driver parked it against the chain link fence. This was another terrible experience from Advanced Towing.

They towed my car on Sunday night on my birthday dinner from some parking lot that belongs to the bank I never heard of. They ware closed and everybody was parking there They towed every single car in the period of 1.5 hours, and charged me 135 dollars for just one mile. My birthday dinner is ruined.
This company should never exist, they just here to make money.

SOB, hope they get cancer and die. .. towers are valuable if they’re serving people with disabled cars, but their business is to prowl for cars to tow away, and hold them for ransom. They got me in the Marymount Balston parking lot (off Glebe/​Fairfax Dr) on a Saturday morning — 1,000 empty spaces, about 6 cars parked. So either a guard or the tow driver spotted me, and came after me despite the empty lot — I was literally gone for 3 minutes to the ATM and my car was hooked up (tail up) — $ 25 release (cash) fee. It served no purpose but to make money; this is something that grass roots activism should address.
Here’s what I learned — they break into your car using a wire jig (like a coat hangar) to release the parking brake and the transmission out of park — otherwise, they destroy your FWD transmission and wear out your parking brakes by towing from the rear on a FWD car — in breaking in, they damage your (rear) side window gasket and rain water will leak into the door over time. I’m investigating if this is legally permitted to beak into your car.
In other places where they have a contract, they have lookouts and call the tow driver — your car will be gone in minutes.
Many tow drivers get a kick out this, and get a bounty for having your car. So, karma of cancer is their reward.
I will also hold it against Marymount; it’s my objective to convince at least one person to attend another institution instead of Marymount.
Here is additional information; just Google Towing Arlington:
In August, a woman pulled up to Westmont shopping center on Columbia Pike in Arlington and parked in its lot. She’d come to assist a friend whose car had broken down on the adjacent street. No more than five minutes after they started working to jump-​start the car, the driver noticed her vehicle being towed. She called out to and chased after the driver to stop, but the truck kept going.
«He saw me and hopped in his truck and drove off as I was chasing after him,» reads a complaint that the woman later filed with Arlington County. «I saw him smile in his rear-​view mirror and he refused to stop.»
Stop right there: According to county regulations, the tow-​truck driver was committing a civil infraction. If motorists witness their vehicles on a tow truck before it leaves the premises, they are entitled to the option of something called a «drop fee,» when the driver is supposed to release the vehicle at a cost of $ 25. In addition, the company in this case, Advanced Towing, was not able to produce photographs of the vehicle taken prior to towing. That’s another requirement.
Based on the evidence, Arlington County police «determined the tow of [the] vehicle was in violation of existing county ordinances.»
What a glorious determination. How often, after all, do you get your local government to tell you that, yes, you were right, and the company that whisked away your car in a flash was wrong?
So what sanctions did Arlington County impose on Advanced Towing? Since the complainant «stated … that a refund would satisfy her… no charges were filed against Advanced Towing,» according to the police report.
So it goes in Arlington. Tow truck operators are vested with the authority to essentially fine you at will: They can snap up your car, drop it at a remote location, and charge you $ 115 for the trouble. Yet when they run afoul of the rules, there’s rarely any fine for them. A refund of the tow fee is usually all it takes to make the complaint go away.
Of the 91 complaints filed with the county over the past two years, there were violations, or possible violations, a total of 14 times, according to investigation reports obtained by TBD. And according to the records, no fines were ever issued against towing companies for these violations.
In the collective memory of the Arlington towing crowd, in fact, no one can remember any fines being issued since the county’s towing law went into effect in 2006. Detective Matthew Owens, an Arlington County Police detective, says that since he took over investigations of towing complaints in spring of 2009, the only time a violation has gone to court is when he witnessed the violation himself.
The violations are typically technical yet critical: A sign warning people that towing is enforced at a particular lot is missing or inadequate, or the tow company is unable to produce a photograph of the vehicle prior to it being towed.
Rather than charges being filed, however, these infractions are usually resolved by the offer of a refund. In one example from January of this year, a complaint that resulted in Advanced Towing Company being found in violation was settled in just such a manner.
«Det. Owens determined that due to the fact that no sign was posted at the entrance from Wilson Boulevard, [the] vehicle should not have been towed. He further determined that since the signs were replaced so quickly, and a refund was made … no charges would be filed against Advanced

Agree, getting towed sucks and this occasion was no different. It was $ 135 to tow my car less than 5 miles. That is ridiculous.

Getting towed sucks, but when it is for no reason at all it is infuriating. Tow truck drivers are not law enforcement or investigators. This was not just a onetime experience from this company. The next day the driver caused a scene, by confronting my daughter in the establishment that uses the parking lot. That is harassment. I am considering filing an official complaint with the police department. You are a tow truck driver, guy, calm down. Your job is to tow vehicles that you are «told» to tow. Not run surveillance and investigate.

1. Waiting 30+ minutes to get my car off the tow lot because I’m blocked in by some other persons car is bull crap.
2. Paying $ 135 for less than five miles on a tow is bull crap.
3. Being towed while my parking tag is in my car is also bull crap.
4. Being towed from my homes parking lot is bull crap.
5. Being towed from a half empty parking lot is bull crap!
Verdict– towing companies cause nothing but problems and were started to make a quick dollar when in all actuality parking at my home is hurting absolutely no one!!!