Coro Realty, Midtown Place Shopping Center, The Home Depot, PetSmart, Whole Foods, Starbucks, Staples, TJ Maxx, GNC, Olive Bistro. SCAM, Ripoff, Deliberately Deceptive Signage Atlanta Georgia

We will never shop at the Midtown Place shopping Center again. We had planned on shopping at both the Midtown Place Shopping Center and at Ponce City Market.  We tried to valet park at the Ponce City Market first, but we were only two cars back when they said valet parking was full. So we drove around the rest of the parking lot only to find no spaces available.

As we had planned to shop at both centers, we drove across the street from the Ponce City Market to Midtown Place Shopping Center and found parking there. There were signs stating private parking on one row near us, but not the row we parked in so we assumed we were OK. We decided to have lunch at the Ponce City Market first, so we walked across the street to the Market and had lunch and did some shopping. When we were finished there, we crossed the street back to the parking lot where our car was and walked to our car to drop off some bags before going into any of the stores at the Midtown Place Shopping Center.

When we got to our car, we found it had a parking boot on it and there was a sticker on the window stating we had parked illegally! We waited about 25 minutes for Advanced Booting Services Inc. to show up to our car, only to find out it was a $75 fine to get the boot removed!

First off, if we had parked illegally, what happened to the standard roughly $25 ticket? $75 is highway robbery.  Secondly, in our opinion we were not parked illegally. There was no sign in front of the parking space we parked in so how were we to know we could not park there? 

We were told that there is a sign at the entrance to the parking lot, well this parking lot is on a very busy road, when you are turning across traffic, into the parking lot, you are not stopping to read a small sign that says all spaces are only for customers of the Midtown Place businesses, you are watching traffic and making sure you don't get hit by all the idiot drivers out there.  They had placed large signs at individual parking spaces in the row across from us, specifying that those spaces were only for Midtown Place Shopping Center business customers, so if the space did not have a sign, one would assume, it was not restricted? right? wrong.

I told the person who was dispatched to collect our fine and remove the boot that we had planned on shopping at both centers, we were told, it does not matter, once we crossed the street to the Ponce City Market, we were in voilation and they could put the boot on our car. According to their rules, you can only shop at Midtown Place Shopping Center stores, if you want to shop at Ponce City Market, you have to get in your car and move it across the street to their parking lot. 

If I go to a shopping mall I don't move my car to a space in front of each store to go in that store, I park once and walk from store to store in the mall, and do all my shopping, then go back to my car. It wastes fuel to move your car a few hundred yards, in this day and age of being Green, just walk.  Just walking cost me $75!

Now that I am looking into this as it has happened to me, I am finding all sorts of similar complaints from people all across Atlanta.  The City of Atlanta has given Advanced Booting Services Inc.(and many other companies) the right to make up their own quirky parking rules, police private lots to enforce those ridiculous rules, and boot cars that don't comply.  They can charge up to a maximum of $75, so of course all the companies charge the maximum.  We found out the person who booted our car does not get paid by the property management company, Coro Realty Advisors LLC or Advanced Booting Services, their employer, their wage comes from the fines they collect, so it is basically a commission only position, so of course the employee is going to boot as many cars as they can, legitimately or not, to make as much money as they can.

This is an absolute scam!  I hope all the businesses at these shopping centers lose all their customers and go out of business because they are not sticking up for their customers and demanding the property management company stop holding customer's cars for randsom!