WENDY KNOWLER

There’s been a satisfying resolution to the towing tale of woe that I shared in last week’s column.

Aluwani Phungo’s hatchback was being held ransom by a towing company, having been towed from the scene of an accident after her collision with another motorist a month ago.

Phungo’s car was not insured, but the other motorist involved was a Discovery Insure client, who had handed her phone to Phungo “to speak to someone from Discovery”.

Phungo, 19, understood that the insurer had authorised her car to be towed — along with its client’s car — by the tow truck operator on the scene, so she signed the “check-list” form she was given, and off went her car.

She later discovered that the tow was for her account — Discovery had not authorised the towing or the daily storage fees. The day after the accident, she was presented with an invoice for R12,293, including a towing fee of R6,200, “administration” of R950 and two days’ storage amounting to R790. By last week, storage fees of almost R400 a day had inflated that debt to about R21,000 and counting.

Her desperate mother Mologadi turned to me for help, but as is so often the case with towing operator disputes, there was no proof of the teen having been misled during that phone call, and the form she signed — and didn’t read, believing it to merely confirm her car’s details — committed her to the towing and storage costs.

Mologadi consulted an attorney friend and an urgent application for the release of the car was to be heard in court on Friday. But on Thursday the towing company released the car to the family, without them having to pay a cent.

I suspect the insurer, which has that towing operator on its approved list of service providers, may have had some influence on that outcome.

Repair quotes have since been obtained and the third party claim will now be processed by Discovery Insure.

I do like a happy ending!

The guilty party’s so-called insurer claimed on the phone that the towing was authorised and that they would provide my wife with a substitute car. Of course this was a scam call orchestrated by the tow truck company.
— Tow truck company victim

But for many who fall for the “your insurer has authorised us to tow your car” line at the scene of an accident, their story ends either with the very unhappy payment of vast sums of money to get their car back, or, if they lack the means to pay or to get legal help, they are forced to surrender their car.

Fred e-mailed me this week to say: “Your article describes almost word-for-word the encounter my wife had with a tow truck company.

“A negligent insurance client ignored a stop sign and wrote off my wife’s vehicle. And then a towing company got away with more than R14,000 of our money because of their absurd towing and storage fees.

“The towing happened as described in your article — through a phone handed to my wife. The guilty party’s so-called insurer claimed on the phone that the towing was authorised and that they would provide my wife with a substitute car.

“Of course this was a scam call orchestrated by the tow truck company.

“Thank you for highlighting some of the pitfalls with vehicle accidents.”

The advice, again, is never to let a stranger at the scene — be it the other motorist or a tow truck operator — make a call and then hand you the phone to discuss towing your car from the scene.

You have no way of knowing who you are actually speaking to.

So always make that call yourself.

And most important, before signing a form handed to you by a tow truck operator, read it very carefully, front and back — the financial commitment bits are usually on the back — before signing.

Here’s another key piece of advice that could spare you all manner of drama: get into the habit of using your smartphone’s camera or video function to capture your own evidence.

For example, whenever you hand over your property to a third party, take multiple photos of it first, up to the point it leaves your hands.

If a tow truck operator damages your car, how will you prove that the dent wasn’t “already there” if you don’t have your own proof?

If you buy something online and take advantage of the “cooling-off” period to send it back, how will you prove that it was in a pristine condition when you handed it over, if the company denies you a refund on the grounds of it being in a poor condition?

Brent Barachievy from Cape Town ordered a R6,000 TV from Takealot, but wasn’t happy with its sound quality so, early last month, he sent it back.

Takealot told him his return had been rejected because the TV had been received damaged and in a poor condition.

He was sent photos of the TV he allegedly returned, revealing a splintered screen and an abundance of dirt and dust on the back. He protested that this wasn’t his TV, but the company shut him down, declined to investigate and attempted to send him the damaged TV, which he refused to accept.

“Had I known what could happen, I would have taken a photo of my pristine TV in the hands of the two staff members when they collected it,” he told me.

I took up the case, making the point that the TV in the photos was caked with more dust than a brand new TV that had been kept in a house for three weeks could possibly attract, and suggesting that the possibility that the TV was switched in transit should be interrogated.”

Takealot has since refunded Barichievy, saying “a return processing error” resulted in the return of that TV being “incorrectly logged”.

“This error is currently being fixed so as to prevent this from reoccurring,” the online retailer said. Due to “human error”, the returns team had accidentally sent Barichievy photographs of an incorrect product.

And presumably it was yet more human error that was responsible for the company not entertaining Barachievy’s protests, until he sought third party intervention.

So be sure to use that ever-ready smartphone technology to create your own protection against such “errors”.

CONTACT WENDY: E-mail: consumer@knowler.co.za X (Twitter): @wendyknowler Facebook: wendyknowlerconsumer