Aquarteroftowingcomplaintsareagainstonecompany
‘These guys feel particularly predatory’
Every morning, Jennifer Maestas looks out her apartment window in Northglenn to see if her car is still there.
She knows to look because most days she sees Wyatt’s Towing drivers circling the lot, looking for violators.
On a recent Friday morning, Maestas didn’t see her car. It had been towed in the middle of the night, she said, the result of a permit screwup by her apartment management company. The tow forced Maestas to take the day off of work, and she didn’t have a car seat to take her daughter to day care.
“As a single mother, this is a worst-case scenario,” Maestas said as she waited to get her car from the Wyatt’s Towing lot in north Denver. “There’s nothing you can do.”
Maestas isn’t alone in her complaints against Wyatt’s Towing, a Front Range staple whose blue-and-white signs are omnipresent across downtown Denver parking lots and in apartment complexes throughout the metro area. The company has become a regular target before the state’s Public Utilities Commission — which regulates towing companies — and its practices have prompted an extensive consumer alert from the Better Business Bureau.
Wyatt’s five locations and sister companies — which span from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs — accrued more than 150 complaints to the Public
Utilities Commission last year, according to state data, accounting for nearly a quarter of all towing complaints in Colorado. And of the $5,305.32 in state-ordered customer refunds related to towing last year, nearly one-third came from
Wyatt’s companies.
“Nobody is happy with tow companies,” Maestas said. “But these guys feel particularly predatory.”
A pair of state lawmakers, however, wonder if the Public Utilities Commission has the power to effectively crack down on bad actors.
“I have been concerned about whether the PUC is adequately staffed and has enough authority to adequately represent legitimately aggrieved residents,” said Rep. Edie Hooton, a Boulder Democrat, who’s working on another towing bill to complement one signed into law this past legislative session.
Complaints piling up, but enforcement lags
Between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, no Colorado towing company received more consumer complaints to the PUC than Wyatt’s Towing and its sister companies, Boulder Valley Towing, Lone Star Towing and Klaus’ Towing.
Of the 158 total complaints, the PUC found the companies to be out of compliance with state statute in just 14 instances, according to state data. Wyatt’s Towing itself had 12 violations; only one other towing company in the state had more than four.
Wyatt’s and its sister companies also were forced to refund $1,722.86 by the PUC consumer affairs team last fiscal year — more than 32% of the total refunds issues by all Colorado towing companies during that stretch, according to state data. The company also paid out an additional $1,623.79 in refunds issued by the PUC’S investigations team, and another $551.40 after an administrative law judge sided with one complainant last year.
But despite the complaints, the PUC did not fine Wyatt’s once for any violations during that span, a department spokesperson confirmed.