So on Monday, my 2 month old car got broken into while parked at Parkway Parking Services' parking garage on 12th and Walnut in Philadelphia. This sucks on many levels, one of which being this was the first I'd driven to work in months. I had been sick all weekend and wanted to be comfortable on my commute.
The thief/vandal broke the passenger side front window. They reached in, ripped open the glove compartment, and stole the GPS device that was in there. Unfortunately this was also my birthday present which Michiko and her family were kind enough to get me last August. It was a disappointing evening on many levels.
The Parkway people at the facility, the grunts, were mostly reasonable. They took an incident report, snapped all sorts of Polaroids. The security lady advised me she had just (just before I came down to report the problem) "done her rounds." Fat lot of good that did me. She had "not seen anything."
One of the reasons I like parking at this garage is that you don't have to leave your keys, you park your own car, and yes, that they have security that monitors the building. Their security failed.
The car was a mess. There was glass everywhere. The passenger seat was full of it. It was in the back, on my son's car seat, on the driver seat, in the cup holders. I had to carefully remove just enough glass to make the car usable. I then drove my car back out to the dealer on the Main Line, with the passenger window simply not there, in 14degree weather. Did I mention I drove that day because I was sick? Yeah, this really didn't help.
So I drove straight to the dealer that night. I left the car there, and asked them to clean it and replace the window. I had the car back Wednesday night after $420 worth of work. About what I had expected.
What I hadn't expected was, before receiving any phone call from Parkway, to receive a typed, pretty much form, letter disavowing all responsibility.
My advice to anyone reading this is to find another parking garage service. Patriot Parking is spread throughout Philadelphia pretty much anywhere there is parking required, and at this time I guess my advice is to use them. I know personally they have taken monetary responsibility for damage that occurred to cars under their watch.