While the dispute between an NYC McDonald’s and some loitering elderly customers comes to an end, there is another feud brewing a few hours to the northeast.
For two decades, a group of senior citizens have been meeting several times a year in the parking lot of a local Burger King before hopping on a rented van that takes them into Boston for the day. The ladies say they’ve never had a problem with the BK management, that is until last Friday when all eight of their vehicles were towed away.
The 14 women tell the New Hampshire Union Leader that they were returning from their most recent Boston trip last Friday just as a tow truck was taking away the last of their cars from the BK.
They admit that the fast food joint recently put up signs warning that non-customers would be towed, but said they had not previously been warned about their parking.
“Burger King should have put post-its under the windshield wipers (saying) don’t do it again,” said one of the women. “They couldn’t have been oblivious to the fact we’ve been doing this all these years… I think it was a dirty trick.”
Dirty trick or not, it cost the senior citizens a nice chunk of change. The towing company called by BK managers usually charges $165 for car owners to get their vehicles out of the pound, but the operator of the tow business decided to drop that to $100 after talking to the women.
“I felt horrible when they all showed up,” says the owner of the tow company. “They were sweet little old ladies.”
Sweet little old ladies who still needed to ante up $800 for the tows.
The Union Leader tried to get comments from various levels of BK management, but received no response. Workers at the restaurant in question claimed to not know the identity of the franchisee that owns the particular location.
The only person willing to talk to the paper was the tow-truck operator who said the BK recently began cracking down on non-customer parking in order to run out pesky teenagers who speed through the lot and act the way you’d expect obnoxious teenagers to act. We’re not quite sure how towing parked cars stops teens from speeding through the lot…
One of the women tells the Union Leader that some of the women in the group, who average 80 years of age, do purchase food at the BK before heading out on their excursions.
She also says that she feels like the cars in the lot are good for the BK’s business.
“We look like we’re customers,” she explains. “We thought we were doing Burger King a favor; their parking lot is never full.”
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
