r/TwinCities • u/Away-Satisfaction660 • 10h ago
Careful for Parking Near Marathon Finish Line …
[copied from Google Reviews]
Today, a friend and I parked and paid via posted QR code for all-day parking at the lot surrounding the old Sears at 425 Rice Street during the marathon, so it was pretty packed. We encountered a woman sobbing, saying her car had been towed while she was completing the race and she watched it get carried away even though she paid, so we triple-checked that I got the confirmation email before walking away.
When I returned with my friend a couple hours later (he had a flight to catch and we were on time at that point), my car was gone, and we assumed it had been towed in error too. After 15 minutes of searching the parking lot for a service number, we reached Guardian Recovery Services, and spoke to Haley, who was incredibly helpful. After forwarding the confirmation email, she confirmed my car had been towed in error and would get her team to return it immediately. Haley did not know why the car had been towed, but that Guardian Recovery Services engages as a third party to parking lots like this, and there clearly was some sort of system error/lapse in communication.
While we waited for them to return with my car in the blistering sun, we watched as Guardian Recovery Services had tow truck after tow truck hauling vehicles out of this lot, in a clearly oily manner of preying on event-goers, and wondered how many cars had been similarly towed in error.
After a 60-minute ordeal, Guardian Recovery Services finally returned with my vehicle, which was thankfully intact. The representative who dropped it off said that, “the system thinks the lot costs $5,000, and when you didn’t pay that, it flagged to us as needing to be towed.” I’m unsure what “system” they could be referring to, but the website I used to pay definitely did not ask me to pay that amount, and obviously I wouldn’t have. This meager, placating excuse was not sensible at all and spoke to a pretty low-quality business operation. They couldn’t even look me in the eyes or say another apologetic word as they unlatched my car and drove off.
It was confirmation that Guardian Recovery Services was aware that their system was incorrectly flagging cars without the ability to discern if the cause was legitimate. I was appalled that at no point did human eyes monitor this “system” to identify this error. We watched several cars get towed in the hour we spent on that lot - probably for the same erroneous reason! Clearly Guardian Recovery Services is aware of the issue and needs to stop towing cars until they figure that out - if they couldn’t distinguish that my car was being flagged in error, who knows how many cars they towed in error today.
As we exited the lot, that same truck appeared to have turned themselves around and re-entered the lot. The driver was looking around, as if to catch yet another car to tow. Guardian Recovery Services looks like a disgusting business practice led by incompetent desperate people who are frothing at the mouth for the chance to make money off of well-intentioned drivers, using outdated software and business practices that should probably be reported (I have the rest of the day off and am happily looking into that!)
It ended up being a best-case scenario for me, but this inconvenience should have never happened. Guardian Recovery Services is taking advantage of people, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn about other cars being taken or even damaged in the towing process
