Kingtow boss moons 7NEWS camera crew as he’s | Australian Markets

The boss of a Perth tow truck company has dropped his pants and proven his rear finish when confronted by 7NEWS about how he runs his business.

“That’s what I think of you, c***,” Waldo Wessels stated.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: 7NEWS tracks down Kingtow boss in Sydney.

Wessels is the 32-year-old proprietor and director of Kingtow Pty Ltd, which supplies towing providers in Perth and has garages in Osborne Park and Canning Vale.

Wessels lives in Sydney’s southern suburbs, working the business over the telephone.

In current months, dozens of Kingtow prospects have come ahead with complaints about huge charges they’ve been charged for primary tows on vehicles with solely very minor harm.

Bills for $5,000 have been issued for short tows of simply a few kilometres by means of suburban Perth.

“That’s an insurance rate, industry practice mate,” Wessels, who says he runs a respectable small household business, informed 7NEWS in Sydney on the weekend.

“We charge insurance companies, we’ve always been paid by insurance companies.”

But recently insurance coverage firms, together with RACWA, have refused to pay Wessels’ payments and he has allegedly threatened to ship debt collectors after the motorists themselves.

“It’s horrible, I’ve never heard of this before, so how can it happen in Australia where I live? I love this country,” Kingtow buyer Andy stated.

Kingtow charged Andy $5,400 after it towed his driveable car 4 kilometres from Innaloo to Osborne Park.

A fortnight in the past, Kingtow stated it was nonetheless holding 50 vehicles belonging to RACWA claimants as half of an ongoing dispute.

Neither Kingtow nor RACWA would replace that determine this week.

Kingtow buys particulars for towing jobs from third celebration accident management providers.

Motorists usually telephone these providers’ 1800 numbers by mistake after Googling their insurer.

When Andy’s insurer wouldn’t pay, Kingtow saved his car for 2 months till he coughed up the money himself.

Dozens have tales similar to Andy’s.

Sometimes the charges are properly above the worth of the car, and infrequently greater than the price of repairs.

In January, WA launched a price cap of $485 on tows from the scene of a crash, which technically solely applies to a 2km radius across the crash web site.

The cap often doesn’t apply after you’ve gotten already pushed home from a minor crash, which is when Kingtow usually arrives.

New laws

The WA authorities is planning to introduce two more phases of laws on the towing industry however has no strong timeline on when.

“We’re just getting the data in from the first part of the phase one, which is that crash towing, and seeing what adaptions we need to make,” stated Minister Assisting the Minister for Transport, Jessica Stojkovski.

“I think the footage that you captured actually just demonstrates the type of people that we are dealing with in this industry, it shows that potentially they would not be a fit and proper person to operate under the next phase of the regulations”

RACWA has declined to touch upon particular instances.

“Despite recent WA towing reforms which have brought important improvements, unfortunately there are unregulated spaces where we are continuing to see instances of unreasonable behaviour and practices by some towing operators,” an RACWA spokesperson stated.

Wessels has repeatedly accused 7NEWS of telling “lies” and working “unbalanced stories”.

Kingtow assertion

Declining to reply detailed questions from 7NEWS, attorneys for Kingtow referred 7NEWS to a assertion made by the company on May 16, 2025:

“We can understand customers’ frustration when the RAC is saying they won’t pay for their car to be towed or released from a yard. We have fought for weeks for the RAC to change their stance, and they have now done so in respect of some of the vehicles. Thousands of small Australian businesses owners know the stress and frustration of larger and more powerful corporations withholding or delaying payment for services. Being made the scapegoat only makes it worse.

• On 9th May 2025, RAC informed its insured clients that the customers would have to take steps to pay Kingtow themselves and then seek reimbursement from RAC.

• They put the onus on those customers to retrieve their vehicles at their own time and cost and told them to keep any receipts

• RAC did not say they would cover the costs but rather that: “Any request for reimbursement will be separately assessed by our claims team.”

• This mirrored a sample just lately the place RAC started to make towing charges, yard or different prices and retrieval successfully a matter for the impacted buyer and Kingtow.

• In that occasion we will perceive why prospects are sad with us – nonetheless we’ve had many more inform us they’re sad with the actions of their insurer.

• This could clarify why, on Tuesday thirteenth May 2025, RAC – all of the sudden settled a whole of 20 invoices for towed automobiles held by us and we organized the release of these automobiles instantly.

• Where RAC have wrongly left their own insured purchasers to pay payments that ought to be lined by the insurance coverage they pay now we have decreased our tow charges significantly to help purchasers with settling their invoices and getting their automobiles returned.

• In some instances, now we have waived the tow charge utterly.

We are a household run company that has complied with each regulation throughout the industry, that has been pressured to have interaction attorneys to get RAC to pay out on claims and who’ve waived prices for patrons impacted by their actions. RAC have used us as a handy scapegoat and focus for the anger of some prospects when the answer has been, is and can stay for them to – pay up on claims.”