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S/O of Bump c/p: we were charged with years of impound fees with no notice
There were a lot of people calling BS about the bumpie in the c&p claiming she had never received notice that they were accruing impound fees on a car for 18 months. She was an idiot for many other reason but she could totally be telling the truth on that part.
Here is our story: several years ago, DH had is beloved 1969 camaro stolen out of his drive. It was his first car from when he was 16 yo and he completely restored the entire thing. He took it from a $4k piece of crap to worth over $40k. In 2003, DH left it parked in the drive and fell asleep without putting it into the garage for the night. It was stolen right out of the drive. In 2008, 5 years later, we received a form letter from the police department asking us the "disposition" of our stolen property. They wanted to know if it had ever been recovered, had we ever received insurance reimbursement, etc. We filled out the form and returned it. A few weeks later, we received another letter stating the case had not been solved and the status was being changed to "inactive." A YEAR later, we receive a notice claiming we owed 2 years worth of impound fees for our camaro. It was definitely ours, the VIN matched. The impound fees were $50 per day for two years--yep, $37K. Oh, and if you're following the timeline, the car had been sitting in their impound lot for a year already by the time they sent us a letter asking if we had ever recovered it.
The letter we received listed the address of the impound lot so DH left work immediately (I called him at work to tell him about the letter) to go try to find his car. When he got there, he was told the letter with the assessment for the fees was generated because they were clearing up the paperwork when the car was sold at auction a month earlier. So the city sat on our collector car for two years, auctioned it for a fraction of what it was worth and then billed us $37k for it. We had to drive to another precinct to get a paper copy of the original police report to prove it had been out of our possession for over 7 years.
Re: S/O of Bump c/p: we were charged with years of impound fees with no notice
To continue the story: they would not just waive the fees for us. DH had to file papers requesting a hearing to get a judge to waive the fees. So more time away from work to appear before the judge. The judge did say he had seen a lot of fukked up cases in his life but the was about the worst he had ever seen as far as fukking up a basic stolen car case.
So yeah, it's completely possible that no notice had ever been sent that the car was in impound in the post below.
So the city sat on our collector car for two years, auctioned it for a fraction of what it was worth and then billed us $37k for it.
The BS part of the original story was the part that came several steps after this point. That is, the bumpie claimed to have learned about her situation at the point where the wage garnishment kicked in.
So in addition to having the already extraordinary situation like you describe, there would have to be three even more extraordinary occurences: (1) the city filed a lawsuit against you but did not formally serve you with a copy of that lawsuit; (2) the city then filed a phony proof of service of process with the court; (3) the court accepted the phony proof of service of process and entered a default judgment; and (4) gave the city permission to garnish your wages.
Steps 1, 2, and 3 are what I called BS on. Those things didn't happen to you. While I think your story is insane and fairly incredible, I recognize that sometimes mistakes happen and cities do outrageous things. For the bumpie's story to be true, numerous outrageous things had to have happened, including at least two disbarrable offenses by the lawyers handling the case.
To answer a few questions:
The theft occurred about a month before DH and I started dating so I wasn't there in the days immediately following to know what DH did. I believe that DH would have followed up by taking the police report to the secretary of state to cancel the plate because that's the kind of guy he is. I vaguely recall that in 2009 when we got the impound assessment, I called the secretary of state to verify that we (DH, really, since I wasn't listed as an owner of the car) was not listed as the current owner of the car. I kept pretty good notes of all the calls I made once we received the notice from the city about the impound but I had a month old baby while I was making all the calls so to be perfectly honest, I would have to reread my notes because all those conversations are now a blur.
No, we did not try to recover the car. I said it was auctioned for a fraction of what it was valued at. It was sold for a few hundred dollars and in the condition it was in when it was recovered, it was only worth a few thousand dollars. It was nowhere near the $40k dollars it had been worth when DH had it. The guy at the impound lot told DH it had been torn apart and left out in a yard for years. Somebody probably stole it for a joyride, ripped off what he could and then left it in an abandoned yard until the city impounded it. I had just been laid off from my job a few weeks before my son was born. DH's company was going into bankruptcy ( he works for one of the auto companies) and he had no job security. We didn't have the time or the money to pursue it nor would we have had the money to restore the car. Now that we are back on our feet, I think DH regrets not pursuing it at the time. DH did receive an insurance check for the full value it was worth at the time it was stolen.
I have no idea why we had to go through everything we did to resolve the fees. It seems like it just should have been waived but I can see why things happened the way they did. DH had to run around getting copies of all the paperwork. The police who wrote up the original theft report said it would take him two days to pull it and literally had to dig it out of a box inthebasement. He gave us a xerox of the original handwritten report. I was surprised it wasn't computerized. I also think that had I ever managed to find a competent supervisor, the whole thing could have been handled over the phone. I don't believe there exists a competent supervisor at any city office in all of Detroit.
I guess I should have mentioned right awatattyat this all took place in the city of Detroit. Then the chain of *** ups would have made perfect sense.