What a Website Assistant Shouldn’t Say About a Car You Towed

A driver discovers their car is gone and finds your towing company’s website at 1 a.m. They ask the chat three things: is my car in your lot, what does it cost to get it back, and was that tow even legal? The assistant, built to be helpful, confirms the vehicle is there, quotes a release and storage figure, and assures them the tow was "completely legal." Each answer feels like good service. Each one steps into territory that state law regulates and that an angry customer, or their lawyer, will read back to you. Towing is one of the most complaint-heavy corners of the vehicle business, and a general-purpose chatbot does not know which of these questions it is allowed to answer.

Release and Storage Fees Are Often Set by Law

The price question is not like quoting an oil change. Nonconsensual towing, where a vehicle is removed without the owner’s say-so, is heavily regulated, and federal transportation law specifically preserves the states’ power to regulate the price of nonconsensual tows. Many states and cities cap release fees, storage rates, and the notices you have to give. When a chatbot improvises a number, it can quote a figure above a legal cap or contradict your own posted schedule, and an inflated quote in writing is exactly what fuels a predatory-towing complaint. An unsubstantiated or misleading charge also falls within the FTC’s authority over deceptive practices.

Confirming a Vehicle Is in the Lot Can Be a Safety Problem

The "is my car here" answer looks harmless and sometimes is not. Confirming a specific vehicle’s location to whoever is in the chat tells an unverified person where a car, and often a person, can be found. In domestic and stalking situations that is a real hazard, which is why telling someone where a vehicle is should follow identity verification, not precede it. A bot answers first and verifies never.

"The Tow Was Legal" Is a Legal Conclusion

The legality question is the trap that closes hardest. Whether a particular tow was authorized depends on signage, property authorization, notice, and state and local rules, and it is frequently the exact thing in dispute. A chatbot that declares the tow "legal," or worse concedes it was not, has handed the customer a statement to use in a complaint or a claim. Determining whether a tow was proper is a question for your management and your records, not a reflex from software trying to calm someone down. The same goes for advice about lien rights or how to reclaim an abandoned vehicle, which run on state procedures that vary and that a bot cannot apply to a specific car.

"Will Not" Is a Suggestion. "Cannot" Is an Architecture.

The standard fix is to tell the assistant the rules. Never quote a release fee. Never say a tow was legal. Never confirm a vehicle without verification. That reads like a boundary. It is not, because of how the model treats a question it was not precisely warned about.

You tell it never to quote fees. A frantic driver asks, "roughly what am I looking at to get it back tonight?" The model hears a simple question and gives a number to be helpful. The instruction was loaded the whole time. The phrasing just slipped past it. A system built to produce confident answers will keep producing them, and a disclaimer at the bottom of the chat does not erase the figure or the "it was legal" the customer already saved.

Who Answers for It

Strip away the software and the exposure is familiar. A new yard hand who quoted release fees off the cuff, told callers where any car was parked, and ruled tows legal on the spot would be a liability the first night. When the website assistant does the same things, the responsibility still belongs to the company, now with a written record, no manager in the loop, and state towing rules that govern exactly those answers.

The companies that get burned are not the ones that put an assistant on the site. They are the ones that dropped in a generic chatbot, assumed helpful meant safe, and found out when a release-fee quote or a "the tow was legal" surfaced in a complaint. The fix is not to take the assistant offline. It is to run one that explains your general process, never quotes regulated fees or rules on legality, verifies before it reveals a vehicle’s location, and routes the rest to your team.

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