Is this right? "Old Post"

[TowZone]

02-04-05: Affordable Towing Wrote,

Where we work the city police dispatch 3A for wrecks. Does that seem right. I was told by someone that it is illegal. I am just wondering how?

 

One more thing if we meet all requirements for 3A do they need to give us an opportunity to tow for them at least on stand-by

 

Tommytows said:

do a wreck for 3a, not in this life time, all they cover here is the cost of clean up. if its not illegal, it should be.

 

auto rescue said:

3A Michigan has a substantially higher rate for accidents.John R.

 

Affordable Towing said:

Thanx all. We have brought it up in council meetings but the three companies that do 3a rotation are big, when they stopped dispatching for 3a they went with a lawyer and got the police to start back. You can really tell the difference. The other small companies don't want to stir up the pot or rile anyone so they acted like it was okay but then they bitch when they have to pick up a car from the 3 and the bill is the same as reg rotation.

 

annettemcd said:

There are a few points worth considering:
1) Does the city have a contract with AAA? If not and I can not imagine that they do, they should not be calling AAA.
2) If they are asking if the customer is AAA, then by all rights, they should also ask if they have any other club, insurance, road service plan, etc. The police should not be favoring one company. If they are dispatching for one motor club, they should dispatch for them all. It is probably illegal to show favorism for one type of provider.
3) If they are telling AAA members which towing services are AAA service providers, then they should know all of the affiliations of all the local towing companies.
4) If being a AAA service provider is a requirement to being on rotation, that might be illegal.
5) If the police are calling a towing company on rotation for an accident, then it is a rotation call and has nothing to do with AAA. Whether or not they are a service provider for AAA or if the customer is a AAA member, should not be a criteria for who is called. Whoever is on rotation should be called.
6) If a towing company is AAA and is called by the police, they would be crazy, in most cases, to charge AAA rates for an accident.
7) If the police are allowing the customer to call for AAA, then they should let them call any tower or motor club which they prefer and it is no longer a rotation call.
8) If the towing company is charging rotation rates and just telling the AAA members that they can get reimbursed by AAA, then the police do not know that any towing bill can be submitted to AAA by a member, it does not have to be a AAA service provider.
9) If you meet the requirements to be on rotation, then I think that you have every right to petition to be on rotation and that they would have to have a public policy that explained why they did not accept you. (see #3.)
10) AAA is a business and they do not have to sign up towing companies as service providers if they do not want to, regardless of the qualifications of the tower.

I would say that you have a right to petition to be on rotation and should get your fair share of rotation calls regardless of whether you are AAA or not. Good luck.

 

body soother said:

I worked for 3a and decided to figure my cost. In Okla if you just ran for them, you would soon be out of business. Here yhey pay about 40% of retail rate. I quit them in 99, and have nothing good to say about them. Here their dispatchers make more than their contractors. I have been ask why I don't work for them by customers and tell them the truth about their rates, they then realize why.
++++++Jim

 

Affordable Towing said:

Thanks guys. We are on police rotation already the problem is the police will dispatch 3a but not any other motor clubs we tried tell them they should. When 3a picks the call up they wait until they load the vehicle to tell the customer that 3a doesn't cover wrecks.

 

Just to claify the police are not calling 3a they call the actual service providers. They do not talk to any one at 3a. The 3 companies that are working for 3a get called directly by the police.

 

Auto rescue said:

Most people join 3A to cover any possible road service problems in the future, most really have no idea who their local service provider is let alone if they are traveling in a strange area to them, so when they request a 3A provider they are in fact requesting a specific service provider and the police dispatchers are calling the 3A providers that they know of as per the members request.

The responding providers that convert the call to private rates are doing what the program calls for, 3A only covers the call when no other coverage's are in place. If the member thinks they have a problem with service or charges 3A will still intervene on their behalf.John R

 

TNTOW said:

In our city the police will allow a person to request a specific towing company if they can respond within the 25 minute window. We dropped 3A January 31 and have not missed it. The police use to call us for 3A request but we refused them because if the call does not come from 3A we do not get the call number. Besides $21.50 versus $85.00 + you decide. Like they said above 3A doesn't pay enough for the clean-up. The other problem I have noticed is consumers consider all roadside service or warranty to be 3A.