As some of you know, the hail beat our car to a pulp during the January tornadoes that tore through our corner of the world. We had just paid it off five days prior to the storm. Whoohoo!!! State Farm quickly estimated & cut us a nice check as we have zero comprehensive. We planned to get the hail damage fixed with a method called "paintless dent repair" but before we could get it to the body shop my purdy green car got all smashed up!!
And for those of you that think that it was my fault, let me clarify...I wasn't even in my PARKED car at the time. I was at the Market doing a little shopping when a man came in & had the "person driving the green car" paged. My heart sank. (Ironically, State Farm had cut us the check the day before.) I had quite the headache after dealing with State Farm for a second time in a week. Anyway, after an entire day (Oh, of course if was on a MONDAY!!!!) I was able to get an estimate done, $1300 damage to the front end. But that was just the tip of the ice burg. The license plates on the car were to expire the end of January. That meant an inspection & a trip to the all so quick & courteous license bureau. I also needed to get the info submitted so the title would be transfered into our name. Without a functioning headlight meant the inspection was out of the question. I went to the License Bureau to explain to the man that my car had been wrecked & to see if I could get an extension for licensing to avoid a penalty. He looked at me like I was asking him to do brain surgery right there without a scalpel....good grief! The answer was simply, no-just pay your penalty.
Next, I went back to State Farm because they called & told me I needed to come into their office & pay my deductible. MY DEDUCTIBLE.....the woman said due to it being St. Farm vs. St. Farm (the man who hit me is also insured through them but in a different town) that it was my responsibility. I tried best I could to explain to this woman (who had obviously been dropped on her head one too many times) that me, myself or I was NOT in the car, nor was it running. She asked, "were you not driving at the time of the collision?" Well, duh... I wanted to ask her should I draw you a picture, perhaps with crayons since black & white isn't working?!!!)
Then I asked the question of all questions. The Granddaddy of them all. Will I be provided a rental car while my car is being repaired? She frantically, almost furiously started pounding on her computer as if to avoid the question. No, she finally said. My insurance policy doesn't cover that for me. I then asked since it wasn't MY claim, how about the man's policy who hit me? Does it cover a rental for my sake? She abruptly looked up from her keyboard & told me so matter-of-fact that she couldn't access his policy as it was a privacy thing. Good grief....I'm about to start cussing here. I ended up getting the number for Corporate out of Columbia & told them nearly word for word what I had just endured. The man on the phone, whom I should tell you was very informative & had awesome customer service skills, answered every concern I had. Ten minutes later, I was done. I went back to my agent & told them what I had learned, including the fact I didn't have to pay a dime towards this wreck. I told her Enterprise had called me less than 10 minutes after I hung up from Corporate & she asked, oh, you needed a car so you could get back & forth to work??.....YA THINK!!!!!!!!!!
So, miraculously my little Sable is in the body shop as of Monday, March 24th. I hope to pick it up in about 2 weeks & have my purdy little green car back in it's spot in the driveway. In the meantime, I am having a blast driving the cute-as-a-bug, PT Cruiser they delivered.
P.S. The headlight was installed before January 31st & Chris was able to get it inspected, licensed and a title transfer without any penalty.
Home Sweet Home! by The Pioneer Woman
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I hope you’ve all been doing well, staying safe, and (hopefully) getting
back to some glimpse of normal. I know normal is a relative term, and I
swear, I s...
6 years ago
