I work for a small carpet cleaning company, and our shop/office is based in a working class neighborhood. We have parked for a very long time in an adjacent burger king parking lot, which is huge. We patronize this burger king daily, and had eaten breakfast there the morning of this incident.
Workers for a towing/revovery/auto auction company asked an employee verbally if they could tow our 4 cars that were in the lot. The employee apparently said yes, so with no A.)"no parking" signs up B.)no written permission/contract C.)warning of any type, they proceeded to tow all of our cars. They claim that they will own the cars in 7 days if we do not pay $280 in cash a piece for these cars that no one authorized to be towed-- plus $20 extra for every day of that week that we are there. The towing company *subsequently* put "no parking" signs in TREE STUMPS located OFF of the property, because the burger king would not allow them to put them on their property. Did i mention that we all have receipts from EATING at the burger king less than three hours before this all started?
So my questions are:
Is this legal? and
What should i do?
I cannot afford this outrageous fee.