Friday, Apr. 18, 2003
No good very bad day, posted at 12:21 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com It has been a rotten day. It's been long enough that I have gained some perspective on it, and tried to look at the positives.Here are the positives:
1. I was not arrested.
2. My car has not killed me yet.
3. I bought my mom a birthday present while I was waiting.
That's all I could come up with. I'm going to share my story now. It's not a story I'm proud of; in fact, it's embarassing and unethical. But we're all friends, right?
Back in December, I hit a curb when we had a snow day. My airbags deployed, the airbags pushed out and busted my sunroof, and it poked a hole in the windshield wiper fluid holder. Otherwise, it didn't appear anything was wrong with the car.
I immediately made a claim with my insurance company. However, they told me it was not covered. Apparently, without my knowledge, I did not have collision insurance on my car. They say they informed me via a letter, but, whatever, I didn't know. So insurnace didn't cover it.
In order to get full coverage back on my car, my insurance company required that I get an examination by a mechanic. I did this, and the mechanic did not notice the air bags or sunroof problems. I took this as a lucky sign, that maybe I would be able to get away with putting in the claim again.
That was a long time ago. I finally decided to do it yesterday. I said that I had hit a curb again, and made an appointment to take my car into the insurance company's office for an inspection.
That was this morning. The old man who looked at my car was nice. I waited for a bit in the waiting room, and he came back out with a grim look on his face.
"You put in a claim in December for this?"
"Yes, it happened then too."
"Do you have a receipt of where you got it fixed?"
Doh! Of course I don't, because I didn't have it fixed. I said it's in my paperwork at home, and explained that I had a mechanic that they had approved look at my car in the interim and that it was found to be 100%. He needs that paperwork, too. I think I have the latter, but I don't have the former because it doesn't exist.
I was in the waiting room still, and watching through the window as all these insurance employees hovered around my car. Luckily, the only claim I had made was for the airbags, not anything underneath, because everything down there is obviously old.
Throughout this whole time, I felt like throwing up. I had done wrong and I wanted to admit it. The thing is, I wasn't even trying to cheat them out of any money, because I have a $500 deductible anyway. I just thought I had to report it and bring it in so they have it in their records. Alas, I was wrong. I was expecting them to call the police and to be prosecuted for making a false insurance claim. Luckily, it didn't happen. We left cordially, him telling me all he needs to see is that receipt and we'd be all set. I said I'd look for it and bring it in. Thank god that was over.
So then I brought it over to the dealership. I need to get this fixed, after all. Are you ready for the estimate? $3100. Yup. I think I've paid about that much on my car so far. There's no way I can afford that, probably not even in the next year. Luckily, I've been driving for five months on it like it is, with no problems. I need to replace my tires, badly, but otherwise I can live with the other stuff. Hopefully eventually I can find the money to pay for my $664/each airbags and $500 sunroof.
It isn't so bad now that I wrote it all out. This entire ordeal has been one of stupidity, ineffectiveness, and shame. May you all learn from my failures.