Let me tell y’all about some bullshit.

Last year, Michael’s Buddy scooter was stolen. We reported it stolen and moved on with our lives, fully expecting to never see it again. Crappy situation, but we are pragmatists.

A month ago, Michael got a voicemail from an Austin Police Department officer saying that his scooter had been recovered by a State Trooper and was available for pickup at a tow lot. No other information was provided.

We were in the middle of the move so Michael wasn’t able to look into it until two weeks later. When he called the tow lot, he was informed that he would have to pay $700 to get his scooter back. We had no idea what its condition was, but it was already kind of old to begin with.

Michael tried to negotiate with the tow lot but they wouldn’t budge on the price. The only alternative they provided was to sign over his title. After much debate, we decided to do that since it didn’t make financial sense to buy this scooter back.

Michael finally made it to the tow lot to sign over the title and was told that he owed $900. Again, he tried to negotiate, but after he finished his spiel, the woman at the lot firmly said, “So... that’ll be $900.”

So Michael begrudgingly signed over his title. After he did, the tow lot employee said, “Ok, now how do you want to pay for the tow fee?”

He owed an additional $275 that couldn’t be covered by signing over his title!

He paid it and got the fuck out of there.

We would have been better off if they had never recovered his scooter at all. Now we have no scooter AND are out another $275. We could sue to have our expenses covered, but that’s a long shot. We don’t even know how the scooter was found or if an arrest was made.

The lesson here is that we would have been better off never even reporting the scooter stolen. The whole system is set up to not benefit the victim in any way.