AutoReturn

Staff was okay but the fees are not… luckily i got there soon enough before the fees increased! 591 dollars? Definitely left a bad impression of San Francisco on me, just don’t bother going here.

This is the worst company I’ve seen yet. $ 590 for towing and storage.

In the mood for Outrageous prices and a horrible attitude? You are in the right place! My car was stolen and I had to pick it up from here… They made more than $ 600 cause my car was stolen and then recovered… How is that even fair? I’m a victim of car theft and then you are going to rob me again???
Fast forward a few months and my car was parked illegally and towed, second visit they had my car no more 5 hours… $ 700 + just to get my car back? City of San Francisco can I please get permission to run a similar monopoly??? This place is making more a hour than most surgeons.
Cherry on top… The horrible attitude of the clerks inside! The only nice person there is the guy in the yard who finds the car and gives it back to you.

I agree with everyone else’s comments. This is scam and extortion in which the City is participating. They all should be ashamed of ripping people off and pretending that it’s being done for the greater good. $ 600 for 1 mile tow and 1 hour storage? Come on.

If i could give them 0 stars i would.
Outragusly priced outside the norm. $ 500 for a two mile tow. Half goes to the city and half to them. Still triple the price of what others charge.
Staff is rude, argumentative and incompetent. I“ll bear you the details of going back and forth with them for over half hour to get the car released.
I hope they burn in hell for their poor business practices.

Ron Perry with AutoReturn is the son of Satan as they landed a rigged contract with the City of Austin’s Police Department that basically told all of the 40 tow companies to go fuck themselves unless they bowed to their bullshit demands… nobody except three tow company owners who paid them and the city council members bribes disguised as campaign donations will benefit from this contract. But then again the FBI has launched a public corruption probe for the awarding of the contract in Austin, Texas.

Parked late one night in the Soma; silly me forgot to read the bright yellow curb that said «Tow-​Away» as well as the sign that said street cleaning from 2−4am on Monday Wednesday Friday. Long story short, my car that I literally only had for a month was gone, I didn’t even have plates on it yet. There was a lady standing on the sidewalk made me feel a little better by saying she got towed from the same spot. «I am an idiot» I thought to myself. From watching too many episodes of Parking Wars on A&E, I knew how ugly it looked to freak out about something that is clearly your fault. Luckily, I was only a few short blocks away from the Autoreturn facility. Once I arrived, I told them the make and model and they got me and my car out in under 15minutes. Then I realized I got two tickets on my windshield which on top of the tow away fee cost $ 650. They could have bought me dinner before they f*cked me, but whatevs, the lady at the front was nice enough. Made me learn reaaaal fast.

I absolutely loathe this organization and its monopoly for outrageous towing which the city has given them. I refuse to call them a company, since they are merely a crooked extension of the SFMTA (no matter how they try to deny it) with guaranteed absurd revenues for dubious tows. Make no mistake the majority of that revenue actually goes right back to SFMTA ($ 260 of administrative fees + $ 60 – 100 ticket goes directly to SFMTA, the towing company *only* keeps $ 300 or so, hah!).
AutoReturn tries to justify themselves saying it’s the SFMTA’s fault for destroying people’s lives. An SFMTA employee admitted to me that many people cannot afford to pay the absurd tow fees and actually lose their vehicles, lose their jobs, and end up on the street. Way to go SF! What a city. AutoReturn loves this as it allows them to sell and profit on the cars that couldn’t be claimed.
My car was towed twice in one week both for dubious reasons and despite attempts to resolve the dispute with the SFMTA, was required to pay over $ 1000 in fees to the city. During the dates my car was impounded, I was even fined with an additional $ 60 street cleaning ticket. Doesn’t make sense when I didn’t possess the car, but with a political system as broken as SF, you are better off making your case on Unilocal than trying to reason with the government patsies at the Van Ness office.
The fact that this organization exists at all is a miscalculated political attempt by the SFMTA to distance themselves from the actual towing and anger they incur for charging 3−10X what any other city in the US charges (including NYC), ruining people’s lives.
My only hope is to raise awareness that AutoReturn and SFMTA are equal partners in the corruption that destroys SF residents’ lives and any frustration for one should multiply your frutration for the other and vice-​versa.
Before I understood the SFMTA and all it stands for, when I saw homeless people defacating on MUNI escalators and facilities it used to make me angry with the homeless who were ruining public property. Now I can’t help but wonder if this person is on the street in the first place by the actions of SFMTA, and maybe that is why they defacate where they do. What else can you do when it’s the actions of a morally bankrupt city government that destroyed you? Sleep at the doorstep of city hall until someone notices?
Stop ruining people’s lives over a misplaced vehicle you crooks!

I had to go through the painful process of watching my car get towed away and then sold at auction. The fees I owe to the DMV, of course I will pay, since I owed those. But the amount that I was being charged, and the purposeful and relentless withholding of necessary information to get my car back was impossible. This company is practicing legalized robbery, and there is a space in Hell reserved for business practices that allow this to be possible… How this is legal I will never, ever understand.

Rude service given to their «customers». Give me a break…“customers”? More like «hosts» and AutoReturn is the parasite feeding away with the city’s blessing (and who is also taking a cool $ 350+ out of the $ 680/​tow a** rape.

I spent 6 hours yesterday, going from 11 S Van Ness to Daly City, back to the Court house, to 3 different windows, and finally to their payment location under the overpass. I spent 80 $ in cab rides going to the wrong locations, and wasted my whole day (amongst the busiest weeks of my life), I’ve never been so pissed. I’ve been in Brooklyn for 8 Years with a car and never had to pay $ 1100.00 for towing. These fuckers better refund everything otherwise I will shame them in the VC world.

Recovering my beautiful car from the San Francisco monopoly was a more pleasant experience compared to negotiating with Chicago Italian and San Francisco Russian mobs to recover a stolen car.
Up front, egregious gouging, with a frown. But no concern of getting shot by actual employees.
$ 590 for 0.2 miles tow. That works out to $ 0.56 per foot of tow distance. Good job guys!

I am angry, pissed, and annoyed that my car got towed… But it is my fault for forgetting that on ⁵⁄₂₃ my spot became a construction zone. For being a tow company i had to pay their ridiculous amount of $ 590 (plus the $ 60 ticket) but their facilities were professional and located near public transportation. I was in and out in 5 minutes and it seems they are opened ²⁴⁄₇.
Totally sucked that I got towed but for a towing facility they were honestly clean and quick. Although I refuse to give them 5 stars for the fact they towed my car hmph

FUCK you guys! Fuck you, you fucking thieving ass trifling ass lazy ass dicks of a mother fucker!!!$ 533.25 of my extremely hard working taxed money to tow my car 0.8 miles, because I fucking checked, you fucking cunt fuckers. Oh and $ 49.50 cause you scum bags needed an extra dolly. AND a $ 96 parking ticket that they wouldn’t let me pay there for whatever lazy reason they gathered.
Kiss my fucking ass and get a REAL job that requires labor and actual work. You’d cry from standing on your feet for more than 45 seconds.
And don’t send me to go hunt for my car in your lot because you don’t know where it is. Y’all sure knew where it was when ya towed it. I’m sure your small Peabody brain can find it amongst the 17 cars you have.
Fuck your mom.

Okay, my car gets towed for the tab being a few months expired. The problem is that the tabs were not 6 months expired according to the CA law so it shouldn’t have been towed. Now even after it gets towed, nothing is sent in the mail until the week after… After a week, your «storage» expenses reaches nearly $ 1200 and only then are you informed.
That was only a minor inconvenience. The major inconvenience is that they stored my car for just a bit over a day and still charged me for a full two days and the bill for «storage» was way over $ 700. Okay, fine, rob me but then they tell me that my vehicle has been moved to their long term facility. So they offer a complimentary cab ride there.
When I get to the long term facility, there are absolutely no signs where the cab driver dropped me off, I had to walk all the way to one end of the building to ask around about the vehicle storage lot and was told I’d have to walk all the way back around to the other side of the building. So after another 15 minutes of walking around to the other side, I finally make it inside and wait about 5 minutes for someone to get to the front desk.
I gave them the receipt for my vehicle and was told that it’ll be towed out shortly. I wait outside in the lot for about two hours till someone walks out and asks me if I’m waiting for a 95 Nissan. I say yes, and they tell me that the people at the short term facility made a mistake and that it’s actually still at the short term lot. They then expect me to pay for the cab ride back which is completely unacceptable.
Finally, they gave in to calling a cab and getting it comped after some debate. I get back to the short term facility nearly 2.5 hours later. I spoke with the manager about their mistake and that they need to at least do something with my overall bill since they wasted nearly 4 hours of my time which I could have spent WORKING and she said there’s absolutely nothing they can do.
Really? You wasted 4 hours of my damn time and now you refuse to do anything about it?! The city of San Francisco should be ashamed of themselves for letting this disaster of a company take care of all the towed vehicles in the city. I understand if the city is running out of money but taking money from hard working individuals is NOT THE ANSWER. This is completely unacceptable behavior and is something the mafia would do all day.

I forgot to change my address on my license so my tickets were being sent to my old address… and lo and behold I wake up to my car being booted.
So I trekked down to auto return at 11pm and Leilani helped me. She was super nice, non judgemental and literally had me out of the office within 15 minutes. An hour later my boot was taken off. Thanks Leilani!
As for auto return as a company– screw you! My entire rim of my Mercedes is scratched from the boot. I will be getting in contact with management to remedy this because it’s quoted over $ 300 just to fix my scratched up rim.

It’s already bad enough that they willingly take your life savings for your car back… But the real problem is the uneducated people behind the counter spewing unintelligible ebonics practically waving their GED in your face. You’d think that to rob people of this much money you’d at least be able to provide a decent window interaction.
**** this place.

Sigh*
SF signs are so fucking confusing.
Managed to squeeze out 580 out of me and my boyfriend. Could’ve been a ticket to vacay!
Never a fun time being stuck here.

I agree that parking illegally is bad. I agree that some kind of citation or fine should be used to help reduce the number of people parking illegally. I understand that the folks who work for a towing company are just doing their jobs. I even feel okay about paying for the tow truck (though, I kind of feel like this should just be part of afore mentioned citation).
What I don’t understand is the pricing here:
$ 270 to tow a car 1.5 miles? Last time I towed my car (same time of day, same day of week), we moved it 3 miles and it cost about $ 120. Where is the extra $ 210 coming from?
$ 263 for administrative fees?!? The car was towed at 7:00pm — I got it back at 9:30pm, same day. Someone was doing what, 176 dollars an hour worth of administrative tasks? The people at their office weren’t exactly blinged out, where is that money going?
Honestly, my biggest problem with this whole mess is: the punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime. I see the benefit of enforcing parking law but, the fines here are just… unreasonable.
More on AuroReturn:

Nothing like working hard at your job; blood, sweat, and tears for every dollar you earn, all to throw it away at this dumb place.
One day, I walked out from my apartment and to my dismay, my car was missing.
Are ya kidding meeeeee?!
At first I thought it was stolen and then the reality of the situation sunk in as I looked around and saw a sign posted with a tow yard number.
I proceeded to dial the phone number to the tow yard to check to see whether they had a car with my license plate number.
Sure enough, lo and behold, they’ve captured my baby and was holding it hostage for ransom.
Thankfully I am within walking distance to AutoReturn and decided to take the stroll.
After finding out the reason why I was towed, which was being parked approximately 4 inches into someone’s driveway, I paid the hefty tow fee of $ 528.25.
Mutha bleep!*&%$#$#$%#*!!!
I swiped my card and signed a bunch of paperwork. I’m not surprised that the workers here were behind some thick bullet proof glass. *shakes fist*
I was led to my car in the tow yard and noticed that I also had a $ 96 ticket on my windshield.
Welcome to the City. Good grief.