Walmart I10 Gulfport refund coming

It's nice to see that you are finally getting the attention you deserved, if a little later than it should have been.

The Mississippi's Governor's office called this morning and apologized for our difficulties at that coastal city of Gulfport. We said Walmart had taken care of us and we hoped Walmart would take legal action against the tow company. We accepted their apology and thanked them for calling.

Delighted to hear the Gulfport Police are now getting into it. Maybe they etc will put a stop to any future incidents if the investigation and results gets enough press. It will go a long way towards repairing Gulfport and Walmart's local image and also with RV'ers stopping and bringing the much needed $$$ into their economy as Mississippi is a very financially poor state.

We know the importance of maintaining a very good desired image around here:

Our local of approx 80 sq mile area gets more than 6 million visitors each year. There's 11 CG's and another needed one soon to be built. It's a very friendly, clean, safe, affordable, blessed with natural A/C like cool pleasant summer breezes and miles of pristine pure clean shoreline public sand beaches on clean fresh potable water with attractions galore. So much for visitors/families to come here for, and they sure do without fail. Annual estimates are that these visitors add/bring in $700-$800 million annually to the local economy each year and it's a very important one leg of our 3 legged local prosperous economy as it would be anywhere. Takes such a long time to build a very good reputation and such a short time to destroy it. Most people and the touring public have a very long memory and even longer if it's not a pleasant memory!

We did get our money from Walmart plus a little for our trouble. We were parked for less than 24 hours and we did ask for permission to stay overnight. The Gulfport police are investigating. See you down the road.

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Great to hear Brenda, very happy for you and kudos to the Walmart for doing the right thing. Hopefully Walmart will push a total ban on the tow company from ever gracing their property again and demand a double + refund of what they took from you and has cost Walmart or prosecute them for running a for profit operation on their property without approval and any other charges possible. That type of stuff has to stop!

On a side note.

I talked to the manager of our Walmart, the manager of Meijer (an upscale same type larger store than the big Walmart Supercenter store) and they said they could request an LEO to ask them to leave as no overnight parking is posted all over the 1840 vehicle parking lot and they both said yes they could but probably wouldn't without some other reason. Then asked the head of the county sheriff here where the 2 stores are located if a sheriff could order an RV towed if staying at either of the 2 stores overnight and he said "NO"! It's private property and they have no jurisdiction over vehicles parking unless the store manager requests them to act with a valid complaint. I asked, what if it's a written ordinance against overnight parking? He said an ordinance is only valid on public property and not on privately owned property. He added that they would ask the vehicle's owners to leave IF the manager requested it but would not call for a tow truck unless the vehicle's owner refused to comply or broke other laws. As for towing, he said an LEO must be present and order the tow truck to come but may not touch the vehicle or hookup until after being told to by an LEO after the tow truck driver fills out the form answering the questions and signs his name and a company order number. LEO wants to know exactly where the vehicle towed is going to be at.

Other areas, cities, or states may have other ways of handling the same situation but I was sure satisfied with the answers I heard.

I found it interesting and a very sensible approach rather than allowing just any willy nilly able to call a tow truck to remove a vehicle.

Happy to see that Walmart did right to the OP. Just a shame it had to go this long for the OP. I use Walmart for overnight parking when traveling, I sure would hate to run into this kind of problem, after getting the OK from Walmart

Brenda41 wrote:
Walmart refunded cash money plus a little for our troubles. The manager at the Gulfport store called this morning and apologized. She had the money sent to our local Walmart and we picked up the cash. It appears the tow company operated without Walmart's authority. We thank everyone for your support. Always sak before you stay at Wally. We did ask. See you down the road.

Glad this turned out a positive for you and your family :)

Glad to hear that Walmart stepped up and took care of it. That goes a long way. I sure hope they (Walmart) take the Tow Company to court or ensures they are banned from their property.

OJ

Walmart refunded cash money plus a little for our troubles. The manager at the Gulfport store called this morning and apologized. She had the money sent to our local Walmart and we picked up the cash. It appears the tow company operated without Walmart's authority. We thank everyone for your support. Always sak before you stay at Wally. We did ask. See you down the road.