Dorn's Body & Paint Shop, Inc.

Review: After my daughter ran off road in bad weather the company was called by state police to tow car. Pulled car from ditch and towed car 1.6 miles. Charged $425 for tow plus $50 storage for first day. When my daughter arrived to pick up car was told the vehicle was not driveable. The head lights did not work and the vehicle was leaking oil bad. Employee claimed they were not allowed to let her drive the car with broke lights. This was reiterated to myself via telephone. Then the company decided to close early and gave us 20 minutes to decide what to do. Had to leave the car another day paying an additional $50. The following day I arrived to get the car with another tow company. Found the car unlocked. A cell phone missing from the car. The headlights worked and there were no leak spots under the car. All the fluids were full. The bumper was hanging off but was able to pop it back together later (This could have also been removed to drive the car home). The employees had no explanation for phone missing or lights working. Since I had the tow truck there I had it towed home and had a mechanic look at it before we started it. Nothing was wrong with the car. The employee was very rude and denied telling us we could not drive the car out the previous day. This is after I had called the state trooper to ask if this was legal and the trooper had called Dorn's. Dorn's also informed the trooper that my daughter had beer in the car. There was a empty torn beer box in the trunk. Dorns had no reason to have been in the trunk and their only reason to tell the trooper of the beer was an attempt to discredit us. This worked in the troopers eyes. I was also upset with my daughter until I saw that it was in the trunk and obviously just trash. She had picked up from someones yard. This is beside the point but just shows the crappy sneaky attitude they had. They refused to acknowledge that anyone could have possibly been in the car to steal the phone even though it was unlocked. I have pictures of the vehicle and recording of some of the conversation.Desired Settlement: I believe a fair price for towing and storage for one day would be approx $250. Although I had to get a tow home based on the false statements of their employees. This is a body shop I'm sure they know that the bumper just needed to be snapped on and they lied about the lights not working and the leaking fluid. So I used my [redacted] tow that if I need to pay for a tow in the future because I used up my [redacted] benefit will cost me another $200+. So I feel I should get full reimbursement for my trouble.

Business

Response:

Dear [redacted],

First off I thank you for allowing us the opportunity to shed some light on this case. I personally am the one that [redacted] dealt with on this situation and will provide a timeline of facts as to what happened.

We were called by Virginia State Police on February 12th, 2014 to tow the claimant's vehicle out of an embankment on 295 north at the 37 mile marker. The vehicle was down and embankment, lodged on small trees and saplings. Our driver had to use 2 recovery snatch blocks to redirect the car off of the saplings and smalls trees, and relocate his truck multiple times to get the correct angle in the snow so the vehicle would come free and not slide farther down the embankment causing more damage to the vehicle. He was on scene working on the recovery for an hour, before finally getting it loaded on his truck. He reported that in his opinion, it was not drivable, as front bumper was hanging off, and there was an oil leak of some kind on his bed from the vehicle. We have a policy to explain to the owner whether or not the vehicle is legal to drive on Virginia road ways as we have had customers in the past that have left our facility only to be pulled over by another police office who deemed the vehicle illegal or unsafe to drive.

The next day the owner contacted us to come pickup the vehicle. They called at 12:05 pm to inquire about picking up the car. Then [redacted], the claimant's daughter arrived at 3:10 pm after we had closed due to the bad weather (snow) setting in and allowing our employees to get home safely before the roads got too bad. Her and her friends were asked to wait outside the front door and someone would show them to the car. When I went outside [redacted] and her three friends were in our body shop storage lot, walking around looking into cars that were in the storage facility. This area is clearly marked with DO NOT ENTER UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY DORN'S STAFF MEMBER. They were asked to please leave the lot, and they could follow me to the towing storage lot adjacent.

They followed me to the storage facility at 3:15 pm to look at the vehicle. [redacted] immediately went to the vehicle (inside) while her friends wanted to horseplay around in our yard and have a snowball fight. They also wanted to repeatedly say snide remarks about the fees that were charged for the tow, and how we were trying to rip off their friend, and had zero respect for myself, and my business property, as well as the property of other vehicles that were in storage. They wanted to play around the wrecked vehicles in our yard, and open some of them up to take pictures. They were asked to please stop, and come over to where the vehicle was. [redacted] made an evaluation and spoke with someone on the phone saying it could be driven she thought. She asked my opinion, and as a Transportation Manager, not a body man as the claimant calls me, I made an educated guess based on the front end damage, front fender damage, and report of an oil leak it would not be in their best interest to drive the vehicle out. I relayed this information to [redacted] over her daughter's phone personally.

By 3:30 pm I told [redacted] we needed to head out of the storage yard, as it was sleeting and I didn't want them, or myself to get stuck in the yard. [redacted] then opened her car and opened her truck to get some things out. One of her friends made statement that it was a good thing the cop didn't find the case of beer in the trunk, and they all laughed. We pulled right outside the gate while she attempted to make another call, but her battery had gone dead. I asked her to let me know what she wanted to do as we were closed and trying to leave. She said she wasn't paying another day of storage because we were scared of bad weather and going home. I told her then I was going back to my office out of the weather to just call me and let me know what she wanted to do. Instead of calling as she was told, she came in our building through and employee entrance after trying to come in the main door that was locked. She stated she would be back the next day at 4:00 pm to pick up the car.

The next day, First [redacted] of the Virginia State Police called to speak with me regarding this incident. I spoke with him and explained what had happened the previous day, and went over the bill of charges with him in detail. I explained what all was involved in the recovery of the car from the embankment, and the time it took to do the work. I told him what the charges were we had on the bill, and what the bill would be for them to pick up that day, and he agreed with the charges based on the scope of work, weather conditions, and time of call. He actually said that to him it seemed to be a very reasonable bill based on what was done and he would call the claimant and let them know he found no wrong doing by Dorns.

That afternoon they arrived to pick up the vehicle. They could not show proof of ownership as the registration was in the car. We sent one of our employees down to the vehicle to retrieve the registration card to verify ownership. As he was looking for the registration card, he found a broke cell phone in the floorboard of the car and placed it on the center console. He then came back to the office to give them the registration card.

They paid the bill, and asked to speak with me in regards to the charges. I spoke with them and answered questions she asked about the condition of the vehicle. As I explained to her, I am not a body repair person, I am the transportation manager, so based on what I saw, it was my opinion it was not drivable. She then wanted to continue to try and belittle me about not respecting her daughter. As I responded and told her how disrespectful her daughter and her friends were, at that point she wanted to speak with someone else. She wouldn't let me explain that I have waived 1 day of storage, and reduced the administration fees, reducing her bill by $75.00. Our General Manager [redacted] stepped in and spoke with her and reiterated how disrespectful her daughter was while in our office, and had she not been that disrespectful, we would have worked something out simply as a goodwill gesture. But due to her lack of respect for me, my business, and what we do, he was not going to give any additional concessions. They then decided to leave.

Approximately 10 minutes later they came back in the office claiming that someone from here had stolen a broken phone that was in the vehicle. When we told them that the person who retrieved the registration sat the broken phone on the center console, she immediately then stated "not that phone, it was an [redacted]!" We told her then that we were not falling for that trick. I explained then that her daughter was using an [redacted] with a broken screen to call her the day before from our yard. She then immediately walked out of our office and said "this isn't over".

We are always the one who the customer points the finger at when issues like this arise. The general public does not realize the costs of what we do, nor do they understand what we do. Our equipment costs over $100,000 for a single unit, insurance costs of $5000 per unit, fuel costs, taxes, workers compensation and labor costs have all gone up and have a company that is on call 24 days per day with 30 minute response time is very costly. People now are used to seeing reality based television shows that they see staged cases for television and assume they saw it on television, so now they are an expert in the field. We take pride in what we do as a service to the public, and always try to educate the general public every chance we get so they have a better understanding of why the charges are what they are. In this instance, we were never given that chance as the claimant came in with all intention of arguing and fighting, and not wanting to listen to a reasonable explanation. I hope this clarifies and quantifies what took place regarding the claim. Please feel free to contact me if you have any other questions or concerns as I want to personally see to it that this is dealt with properly.

Sincere Thanks and Best Regards,