Rossi’s Towing updates policies in response to claims that nurse was refused service
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KION) Rossi's Towing has issued a statement in response to claims that a nurse was refused service because she has contact with COVID-19 patients.
In the statement, the towing company said the incident was due to a misguided error, and it has put a new policy in place since then. The company said that if a driver does not feel comfortable accepting a job, they need to contact the owners to find a solution.
The nurse, Meg King, said her tire blew out on Highway 1, so she called AAA for a tow, but never received service. She said AAA told her that Rossi's Towing, which claims to be the only AAA towing service provider in the Santa Cruz area, refused to help.
In a statement, AAA said, "in this case, we were unable to locate an available vehicle to provide her timely service so we offered to call the CHP or another service option."
The owners of Rossi's Towing said they are confident that with the new policies and training in place, an incident like this will not happen again.
Read the company's full statement here:
"We are a family-owned business and have been serving the Santa Cruz area since 1962. We have deep roots in this community, the one we love and share with many family and friends. Recently, we found ourselves in the news, something very foreign to us...and for all the wrong reasons. So we wanted to share a statement, as this isn’t about making excuses, this is about who we are as people. Our drivers are out there every day working, helping people during this unprecedented time. We get it, we’re on the same team - we provide over 3500 calls a month, some of those include precarious situations and we are proud to have worked with and helped many frontline workers over the years.
Due to a recent misguided error a frontline worker customer of ours was not provided the service she needed. We were devastated by this and have since put a new policy in place, specific to today’s current Pandemic environment to ensure all customers including those who may have been in contact with COVID-19 are provided service. (and on that particular situation a few weeks ago, the reason for the delay in our response to the nurse, is we initially believed it happened in the evening, so, therefore couldn’t locate the proper record, once we realized it happened during the morning hours, we were able to address it.)
We respect our drivers’ concerns, and now if a driver feels uncomfortable accepting a job, they are instructed to contact one of us (owners of the company), to get a better sense of the situation, so we can find a solution, as obviously, a frontline worker knows the proper protocol of social distancing, etc.Rossi's Towing
We feel confident with these new policies and training in place, this won’t happen again, as it is certainly not who we are - we appreciate all of our frontline workers for what they are doing for us here, around the country and globally.
We love our customers and our community and would never choose to leave someone stranded. We look forward to continuing to serve Santa Cruz and the surrounding area."
A second Santa Cruz County resident, Sandy Davis, said she was also refused service by AAA in March. In her case, she said it was because of international travel three weeks prior to the incident.
