Villainous Lincoln Towing Company Could Lose Its License
By Mae Rice in News on Feb 26, 2016 4:34PM
Just as the wizarding world spent decades living in fear of Voldemort, the North Side has spent decades—four of them, to be exact—living in fear of its own Dark Lord: Lincoln Towing.
And just as Voldemort had secret vulnerabilities that I will not detail here for fear of spoiling (and/or derailing my own blog post), Lincoln Towing has secret vulnerabilities, too: licensing issues. The state could soon strip the widely-despised North Side demon company of its license, the Tribune reports.
The company’s current license, renewed for two years in July, runs out in the summer of 2017. However, the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) opened a hearing Wednesday to determine whether the towing company should be allowed to remain licensed.
State officials have received a tidal wave of consumer complaints, pressure from local aldermen—specifically Alds. Ameya Pawar (47th) and Ald. Ariel Reboyras (30th). There's also a petition on Change.org to suspend the towing company's license, and it has racked up 3,100+ signatures.
As a result, the ICC has opened 166 investigations into Lincoln Towing since the company’s towing license got renewed in July, over complaints such as “I got towed for no reason” and “Lincoln Towing knocked me off a 16-foot ladder while I was fixing a roof, towed my truck, and made of fun of me as I lay on the ground with a broken leg.”
(This actually happened, to 55-year-old construction worker Peter Salva,and led to criminal charges, according to the Tribune.)
All told, 75 of the Lincoln Towing investigations have been resolved, almost half of them in favor of the customer. It’s worth reading the full Tribune story just to peruse through the full, wild litany of complaints against them.
In closing, here is “Lincoln Park Pirates,” an ode to Lincoln Towing’s crappiness by Steve Goodman.
“We plunder the streets of your town… and no one can make us shut down,” Goodman sings, and he’s been right for years. But maybe, finally, Illinois government will prove him wrong. (Not that Illinois government is… a paragon of efficacy, really.)