The Car Tale
Feb. 13th, 2003 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guslYesterday morning, before 9:50am, an unseen (by me) red vehicle against scraped my car, and ran away. This was not your everyday scrape. It caused damage that would cost ~$3000 for me to repair: driver's side: rear-view mirror, tail-light, and the (by far the least functionally important of the three, but by far the most expensive to repair) crease between the gas tank and the tail-light. Being already insecure about selling the car in one day, I became almost desperate. I reported the incident to my insurance, and they had me have it inspected at a drive-in shop in Woburn. Unfortunately the assessment will take 5 days to arrive. This question mark would haunt me for the next 30 hours, as I struggled to accept low offers from dealers.
So, yesterday, I spent most of the time talking to body workers and the Woburn Toyota dealer, who offered me $4200 for the car. My ex-co-worker Werner accompanied me and helped me maintain my sanity. I finally called my travel agent and postponed my flight AGAIN (for the 3rd time). So now I'm leaving on Monday.
At night, I printed up 13 sheets titled "HIT AND RUN" asking for help in identifying the bastard (aka "the guilty party"), and put them on car's windshields in the neighborhood. If they find him, I get a check for my deductible ($1000).
Today I visited about 7 dealerships, but only Herb Chambers and Woburn Toyota were making good offers. A lot of dealers simply don't want damaged cars. But I managed to get them up to $4600.
I was surprised at how little they looked at the car. In fact, they missed the slow-moving window and the on-off A/C. My tires, brakes, etc could have been in an awful state and they wouldn't have known. This is probably why dealers, as a class, give people such crappy deals: poor information.... and also the huge rent they must pay on those parking lots. I bet if they spent $100 with a thorough inspection, they could have given me a much better deal. I wonder is there exists some sort of cheap certification like that.
How Insurance Claim Resolution Works
If the damaged assessed is greater than your deductible, then send you a check for the difference. However, the "damage assessed" is almost always not enough to cover the cost of repairing the vehicle. So what usually happens is the mechanic will bitch with the insurance until they pay for the whole repair. This system sort of makes sense because many people out there (myself included) tend to prefer to take the money and not repair the car.
So, yesterday, I spent most of the time talking to body workers and the Woburn Toyota dealer, who offered me $4200 for the car. My ex-co-worker Werner accompanied me and helped me maintain my sanity. I finally called my travel agent and postponed my flight AGAIN (for the 3rd time). So now I'm leaving on Monday.
At night, I printed up 13 sheets titled "HIT AND RUN" asking for help in identifying the bastard (aka "the guilty party"), and put them on car's windshields in the neighborhood. If they find him, I get a check for my deductible ($1000).
Today I visited about 7 dealerships, but only Herb Chambers and Woburn Toyota were making good offers. A lot of dealers simply don't want damaged cars. But I managed to get them up to $4600.
I was surprised at how little they looked at the car. In fact, they missed the slow-moving window and the on-off A/C. My tires, brakes, etc could have been in an awful state and they wouldn't have known. This is probably why dealers, as a class, give people such crappy deals: poor information.... and also the huge rent they must pay on those parking lots. I bet if they spent $100 with a thorough inspection, they could have given me a much better deal. I wonder is there exists some sort of cheap certification like that.
How Insurance Claim Resolution Works
If the damaged assessed is greater than your deductible, then send you a check for the difference. However, the "damage assessed" is almost always not enough to cover the cost of repairing the vehicle. So what usually happens is the mechanic will bitch with the insurance until they pay for the whole repair. This system sort of makes sense because many people out there (myself included) tend to prefer to take the money and not repair the car.