Valet gives away Porsche Panamera
 

$110K car given to wrong driver and vanishes.


http://www.sfgate.com/business/artic...it-9061202.php

One would suspect that the valet gave the car to a friend/relative or someone willing to give a tip/bribe for it. Normally a valet would remember such a car and hopefully take especially good car of it. To me, this sounds like some sort of inside job.

Link no longer works.

Here is a working link.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/busi...it-9061202.php

Well, I never the first article (because of the broken link), but the second article jumps to conclusions, that hundreds before him did what he apparently did: give his fully-enabled keys to the valet.

I have a valet key for my car, and that's what I always give to a valet. It doesn't give full access to the car, and I think it'd make it a bit less valuable to have the valet take off with the car. (Not that my Honda Civic is remotely worth anything like the car that went missing here, but it is on the list of the most-stolen cars in the country, which I don't think the Porsche Panamera is on.)

I drive a ford , not nearly as valuable LOL, but this is why I never valet. I will pay, walk whatever but i try to never valet unless there is absolutely no other possible choice. and if a resturant only valets, i dont eat there. hotel same, i will self park.

And this is why I do NOT valet. EVER.

I have actually opted out of using certain hotels due to a "valet only" policy.

So you say you are traveling with a rental car. Your Chase Sapphire Preferred Card provides primary coverage for the car in the event of loss or theft. Hmm. What if you released the keys to a valet and let a valet drive the car. Is that valet on your rental car agreement or did you just violate the terms of your rental agreement by letting a valet who is not on your rental car agreement drive the car? Does it matter somehow if the valet drives it only in a driveway/garage vs. if the valet actually goes out onto a public street and around the block to a garage entrance?

What does your Chase Sapphire Preferred primary rental car coverage say about if you violate the terms of the rental car agreement? It says you aren't covered.

How do you get your stolen car covered by CSP? You have to go file a police report. How do you avoid mentioning that you released the car to a valet in the police report?

All honest questions... that I do not know the answer to. Easier to just not valet.

What irks me most is the hotel not taking responsibility for their blunder.

Can't get past the paywall.

The link from SanDiego1K works, but I can only read the first paragraph. However, now the llink in the OP works now and I can read the entire article from that link.

IANAL but if the valet parkers were wearing Hilton/DoubleTree uniforms and if the hotel offers valet parking on its website and allows valet parking fees to be billed to rooms, I don't see how Hilton can disavow all responsibility here. Hilton made a contract with the valet parking company so it's not like these guys just arrived on the street in front of the hotel and set up shop. Hilton would be the deep pockets rather than some local valet parking company, although increasingly one sees all of the valet parking places in a city as being operated by the same company, which wouldn't be such a small business after all.

I see many places post signs stating they are not liable for damage or loss. Unfortunately many, if not most, are not binding. The hope is that will be enough to send people away and they have dodged a bullet. Having to pony up the fees to get an attorney involved can also make it unreasonable.

Given the valet operates out of the hotel (and contracted by the hotel), they wear uniforms with the hotel name on them, and chances are the hotel (or holding company) actually owns the lot/garage, the hotel should definitely be on the hook here. Not to say the valet company is blameless. I'd suspect there may be some legal separation of lot operations to limit their exposure.

Those fairly worthless valet agreements say that they aren't responsible for stolen vehicles, but I'd bet there's also a significant difference between someone coming in and stealing a car, and someone walking up to a valet without a valet ticket, asking for the keys, and the valet simply handing over the keys without asking for any other sort of identification.

It turns out it's exactly the same article by the same author, so it doesn't seem to matter which site you read it at.

I was going to say, don't these cars often have LoJack?

Driven straight to the docks into a shielded container, destined for one of UAE, South America etc

No doubt gangs have order list for these high end cars and have spotters outside highend hotels with valet parking.