As the city of Birmingham works on their first draft of an updated towing ordinance, complaints continue to pour in about towing in downtown Birmingham.

Earlier this month Kiersten Kennedy visited EastWest, a restaurant on 2nd Avenue North, and paid for two hours of parking with her ParkMobile app. When Kennedy exited the restaurant an hour and a half later, she was shocked to find that she had been towed.

“I honestly thought that it had been stolen because I had paid for parking!” wrote Kennedy in an email to the Lede. “I realized what happened and called PES who confirmed that they had my car and gave us the address to come get it.”

When a confused Kennedy arrived at PES with her ParkMobile timer still running, she realized her mistake.

“When I got there, I was able to show him the still running timer on ParkMobile, but it didn’t matter,” she wrote. “He showed me that the tag number on my app matched the tag number in their system, but the tag on my car did not—because when we renewed our tag this last time we were given a new tag and sticker and I forgot to update the tag number in the app. They refused to acknowledge that this was a clerical error and that I had in fact paid and would not release my car without paying $160…This practice is clearly predatory and should be highlighted so that someone can stop it.”