They circle like vultures around the parking lots of Baton Rouge. They prowl like hunters up and down streets, looking for easy prey.
They are the Riverside Towing fleet, and they have spoiled more than one LSU student’s day.
Perhaps you parked at CVS when you were really going to The Venue, or maybe you parked in the law lot at 4:29 instead of 4:30. It seems there is always a tow truck at the ready to haul your car and your dignity for the hundreds of dollars it costs to retrieve it.
Merchants who only want customers parking in their meager number of slots often contract towing companies. While this is a legal and acceptable practice, Riverside takes it to a whole new level.
This forces students to live in a constant state of paranoia when they park their cars, even when they have done nothing wrong. The lots in and around LSU have practically become the Wild West.
But students aren’t alone in their opinion of the parking enforcers patrolling the blacktops. Unlike many cases – when students tend to overreact vociferously to actions they wrongly view as unfair – Riverside Towing has garnered its share of professional criticism as well.
The Better Business Bureau gives the company a not-so-sterling “F” rating. That is on a scale of A+ to F, by the way.
It’s not a lie, with the company’s haphazard method of swooping in at opportune moments and leaving owners astonished at just how quickly it transpired.
The BBB cites a systematic disregard for customer input based on complaints filed though the website. It claims nine complaints have been filed against Riverside, and cites them for “Failure to respond to eight complaints filed against business,” in the very next line.
The official complaints filed are just as you would guess. Customers who thought their cars were wrongfully towed showed up at the shadowy River Road compound and — if nothing more — just wanted their car back.
One complainer said he or she approached the facility during business hours and was rudely told by an “employee” that Riverside was closed. The filer asserted that this employee used intimidating language laced with obscenity. The car had been towed from the Summer Grove parking lot with a visitors tag affixed.
While it’s not surprising to see these issues on actual business forums, it’s shocking how consistently Riverside Towing eschews the criticism it receives and uses its virtual hegemony over the streets of Baton Rouge to hurt the people who will suffer most: LSU students.
It practices an unfair targeting of students on and around campus and, barring one exception, do not even think twice in addressing complaints filed in an orderly and professional context.
However, when it comes to customer service – an issue that affects nearly all of the places LSU students frequent – it has absolutely nothing to worry about in that we do not have any choice in giving them our business.
Now, if this were a free market and consumers could choose whose services to use, Riverside would have gone kaput years ago. Therefore, it is solely up to the businesses that contract Riverside’s services to take into account the company’s shortcomings.
That seems unlikely, at best. So until the Mississippi River overflows and submerges the vulture trucks, just park where the signs tell you.
Eli Haddow is a 21-year-old English and history junior from New Orleans.