Synopsis:
Ace Extra Car Parking damaged my 2003 Chevy Avalanche Truck over Memorial Day weekend and refuses to pay for the damages, refusing to answer several phone messages left for them. They are not taking responsibility for parking lots that are extremely full, perhaps even illegally so, during the holiday weekends.
Details:
I am in the process of moving from Colorado to the North-West area. Over Memorial Day weekend, I had to fly back to Denver from Seattle to take care of some personal business. I am pretty unfamiliar of the Seattle area, and in particular the Airport Parking. I had made arrangements over the internet to park my new 2003 Chevy Avalanche truck at the Ace Extra Car Parking lot.
I got to the parking lot on the afternoon of May 24 for my flight. I had not realized that, unlike Denver, I had to leave my truck for them to park at this parking lot. The parking lot was extremely full, with cars parked every which way on every bit of available space, close to several trees and out-buildings / sheds in the area. I expressed my concern at the time, but they said they would take good care of my truck, and as I had a flight to catch I could not make other arrangements at the last minute.
While leaving on the shuttle, I noticed the person parking my truck, taking it to the very back, near a shed and trying to park it around there. He was apparently not able to fit the truck in the tight space there (or on afterthought damaged it while trying to park it there), so he brought it around to the middle and parked it somewhere there.
On returning from Denver, on May 28th, I picked up the truck and went to work directly as I was late. After work, on closer inspection I noticed a dent on the front left side near the light, above the protective plastic molding that surrounds the Avalanche. There is also a scratch on the lens. The damage was way too high to be made by another car or truck. I immediately took the truck back to the Extra Car parking lot, where they asked me to file an incident report and assured me that the matter would be taken care of expeditiously.
Not hearing back from them the next day, I called them up again, and was finally given the name of Mickey Vergillo, who is the President / General Manager. After talking to him, I was once again assured that the matter would be taken care of quickly. He suggested that I take the car in to Dent Wizard (where he has most of his incidents fixed) for an estimate, which I did immediately. Dent Wizard (425-641-3368) gave an estimate of $300.00 and they said that it was higher than average because it was in a tough place to get to. I also got another estimate from Precision Collision (425-641-7885), a body shop, which was for a total of $927.00. I requested Dent Wizard to leave Mickey Vergillo a message to that effect.
After a couple of days, when I did not hear back from him and nor had Dent Wizard, I left him a message myself with both estimates. Several times since then I tried getting hold of him and have kept a record of the times called from my cell phone. He did not have the courtesy of calling me back at all. Finally, when I tried having Dent Wizard fix the car and put it on his account, I found that he had called them and specifically asked them not to fix it, without even the courtesy of an explanation.
I was tired of his games, and left him a final message saying that I would just have my insurance company deal with the situation and shall be giving out this information to the news media of the extreme neglect of their customers at the Extra Car Parking lot. Even after this, he has not bothered to contact me and deal with the situation expeditiously.
I suggest that this company is investigated for other similar incidents. It looks like they have a reputation of over-filling their parking lots over major holidays and the 4th of July weekend is coming up shortly. I would think that there would be something illegal about them filling a parking lot over the maximum allowed, and then trying to get away with not paying for the damages done to the cars. I hope we can prevail upon people running shady businesses such as these and make them pay for the consequences of their actions.
Ro
Bellevue, Washington
U.S.A.
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