Vernola's Towing The staff at Vernola's is incompetent & rude! They are THIEFS!!!!!! Norwalk California

My Daughter was involved in an auto accident on Highway 5 South near Downey.

She was transported to Norwalk Community Hospital , she was treated and released with a cervical sprain.

My husband drove from San Diego to pick her up from the hospital and take her home.

A tow truck driver contacted my husband after the accident informing him that our daughter was ok but was complaining of pain and he asked where I wanted the car towed. He told him to tow it to a AAA approved body shop within the FREE towing range per our triple AAA membership as we live in San Diego and would nedd to address the issue the next day.

The car was towed by the following company and was put into one of their storage lots. My husband and I drove up the next day to retrieve the car from storage where we were treated VERY POORLY by the staff of the following towing company.

We arrived at 2PM and asked to get our car out of storage and were told we had to pay 245.00 to get the car.

We were shocked by the amount we had to pay for 1 night's storage and told them we wanted to look at the car before we paid in bill.

They said ok and we patiently waited for them to get somone to open a gate at a remote storage location. We waited MANY hours and asked them multiple times what the hold up was and they kept making excuses on why they could not get someone to open the gate.

We were very concerned that they were using stalling tactics so they could receive additional fees by not getting someone to open the gate before closing. We got so frustrated and upset by all the delays that I contacted the Sheriff's office to help us out. They were not much help either.

We felt like we were not going to get our car back at this point.

WOW!!! all of a sudden a woman drove up in her white Nissan Murano SUV we followed her to the lot and she proceed to tell us that only 1 person can inspect the car and remove the contents. We were stunned I asked her if this was the law and she said yes so I said show me and she said we would have to go back to the office to get it.

At approx 4:45 we went back to the office after my husband spoke to the owner about the situation over the phone they said we would have to pay 47.50 and we would get our car out of storage. They said they would have someone meets us at the storage in 10mins the tow truck driver arrived he said that he was told to just pull the car outside the storage lot gate and they would not be able to tow the car to another body shop a mile away as we requested per instructions from the office.

The quarter panel was pushed in from the accident and there was no clearance between the panel and tire my husband and I had to pry it away just so we could drive south of Norwalk so we could use a different towing company.

During this hellish experience we found out that the Mayor of Norwalk (Luigi Vernola) owns the body shop they previously agreed to tow the car to. We felt TRAPPED with no way out of this mess Luigi Vernola owns the storage lots and the towing company. The staff at Vernola's Towing are incompetent people and RUDE. I dont understand how these can sleep at night knowing that they are ripping SO many peolpe off. If you get in a accident in this area DO NOT USE Vernola's Towing tell triple AAA you will spend the money to stay out of the town of Norwalk. I hope and pray that no one will have to deal with these people.