By Steven Symes 
Imagine having your car stolen, then finding out months later it not only was recovered but sat in an impound lot, accruing thousands in storage fees. That’s the reality a man in the Washington, D.C. area is facing after nobody thought to contact him about his recovered ride.
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Normally, when your car has been stolen and then is found, someone calls the owner or at least drops a notice in the mail. But Andrew Passie tells NBC Washington he didn’t hear anything after his vehicle was stolen in front of his house in mid-November.
Instead, in late January he called his local police department to see if there was an update. While he was delighted to hear it had been recovered, at the time the man didn’t realize a big bill was coming his way.
In the meantime, the vehicle was towed and put in an impound lot where fees are $20 a day. After sitting for 97 days, plus a $100 towing fee, it’s going to cost the guy $2,040 before he can get it out.
For someone who’s just scraping by, that’s a significant amount of money. He’s struggled with hardship since his vehicle, which he uses to take his kids to school and commute to work, was stolen.
Unfortunately, we see stories like this one way too often. Police and impound lots don’t always contact owners when stolen cars are found and towed away. In a lot of cases the insurance company would be on the hook because the owner would file a claim and no longer own the ride.
But in this case, Passie has to bear the burden of the fees. He’s mad at D.C. Police for not contacting him. We bet they deal with so many stolen cars, since theft there is rampant, they don’t have the resources to reach out to every owner. That’s a sad reality.
The big takeaway here is if your car gets stolen, you need to be proactive in following up with police. Don’t worry about being annoying, because if you don’t bug them you too could be stuck with a big impound lot fee.
Image via Jonathan Reynaga/Pexels