DETROIT – There is no worse feeling than coming out of an exciting Detroit Tigers game, particularly on Opening Day, and your car is gone from where you left it! Was it stolen?
That was Claudia Arroaase’s first thought when she came out of the Tigers 4-0 victory over the Yankees to the grass parking lot behind the Woodward Place Condos and her rented Chrysler 300 wasn’t there. For her it actually was a bit of good news when she heard from about a dozen other angry Tigers fans their cars had been towed from the lot to a tow yard about a 10 minute drive away.
Claudia and her husband jetted in from Guatemala as guest of pitcher Anibal Sanchez after winning a golf tournament. It was supposed to be a fun trip. It went south on them quickly. Claudia’s husband was able to hitch a ride with a carful of stranded illegal parking lot scam victims to the yard owned by Goch and Son’s Towing.
When Local 4 found Claudia, she had no transportation, was freezing cold and her cell phone was on its last couple of minutes of battery. Her biggest worry at that time was whether her husband made it to the yard in time. It closed at 5:30 p.m. and if the tow yard closed before he got there they wouldn’t be able to get their car back until Monday. Their plane back to Guatemala leaves Sunday.
We put Claudia in the Local 4 News van, turned up the heat, plugged in her cell phone and drove her over to the tow lot to meet with her husband. When we arrived we discovered a throng of furious tow scam victims. They had to pay $390, IN CASH, to get their vehicles. They had to have proof of insurance and registration. The Arroaase’s had a particularly difficult problem in that because they had a rental car they had to get the company to fax over release forms before they could get their car. They were the last people left in the lobby when they got their car back around 7:30 p.m.
Parking scammers have been a major problem during Tigers and Lions games for years. The guys running Friday’s scam behind the condos on Woodward Avenue at Alfred Street were especially convincing in that they were handing out pink parking stubs and had four guys directing people into the lot. They’d apparently covered the signs telling people not to park there and one of the signs was turned around… it is so loose you could turn it around with your pinky finger. You would not know the parking stubs covered about a dozen parking lots around downtown but not the lot behind the condos unless you looked… who is looking as you are anxious to get into the ballpark?
Detroit Police do what they can to shut them down. Four people ended up arrested Friday for running scams. They can’t say for certain whether the people they arrested, three men and a woman, were involved in the condo parking scam. But DPD tells Local 4 there is an easy way to know whether the lot you are parking in is legal. Every legal parking lot attendant is required to have a license on their person, a sign with the company name, how much they charge and their hours of operation. If they don’t show you that then find another place to park.
In the end we saw many people who did not get their vehicle out of the tow yard because they couldn’t find the insurance and registration paperwork, some couldn’t come up with the cash, others borrowed their cars from family and couldn’t get there in time. For those scammed Tigers fans the meter continues running all weekend so they’re going to pay more than $390 to get their vehicles back. It’s a hard lesson to learn. It’s also a dangerous and expensive position for tourists to find themselves stranded.