A couple of weeks ago, I received an envelope from my car insurance company. Inside was one of those little yellow feedback cards. You know the kind. "How would you rate our handling of your claim?" The problem is I hadn't filed any claim in years. I started to worry that someone had filed a false claim, and my insurance had paid out some money to some criminal posing as me.
I called up my agent and gave her the claim number. She took a few minutes to find my file and locate the information. It turns out that the insurance company had finally retrieved all of its money from a claim I had filed four years ago. That's diligence, if you ask me. This company didn't stop until the owner of the vehicle responsible for the damages to my car had paid in full (with some interest, apparently, as well). The yellow card was an indication that the claim was finally "closed," at least in the minds of the insurance company honchos.
Here's what happened four years ago this month. I was dating someone new, and he was going to off to Mexico for a week to be at some artists' retreat. We went to dinner on his last night in town--a sushi place on Santa Monica Boulevard, not bad, actually--and returned home. I helped him pack up a few things and then watched him take off in the shuttle that he had ordered before he and I met (in case you're wondering why I didn't just drive him to the airport myself and save myself all of this grief). Just as an aside, the relationship didn't last long after he returned from Mexico because he turned out to be a bit of a jerk, but that's a post for another day.
When I walked out to the street to get into my car--we had walked to the restaurant from his condo--I noticed police cars all around. My car had apparently been hit by a rather large vehicle, and the entire driver's side was almost caved in. The front bumper had been almost completely torn off, too, with only a couple of inches still attached on the passenger side of the car. Four other cars had also been hit, one of them hardly recognizable as a car any longer. Mine was still sort of drive-able, so I took it home and called the insurance company. They started to work.
Once I got the police report later that week, I found that mine and the other cars had been hit by a speeding drunk driver in a Yukon. In case you're not familiar with that model, it's an enormous SUV. I was driving a Saturn L300 at the time, so imagine the amount of damage a huge truck like a Yukon could do to my mid-sized car if the driver was drunk and speeding. The police had arrested him and charged with a few different offenses, but he had been subsequently released after paying his fines. My insurance company and some others were in the process of filing claims against him. My car was in the shop for almost a month as a result of all of the damage, and I can't imagine the other cars (if they could even be fixed) got repaired any quicker. The one parked in front of me had to be totaled by the crash.
The insurance company paid for almost all of the repairs to my car, something to the tune of about seven thousand dollars as I recall. I had to pick up the tab for the deductible, of course, but the insurance company got that money for me out of the Yukon driver and mailed me a second check for that amount. I was only inconvenienced by not having a car for several weeks during the summer. At least, I wasn't working then and could just enjoy the leisure time.
By the way, this car accident was what prompted me to get a cell phone. I hadn't owned one prior to this accident, and I had so much trouble finding a working pay phone that night that I decided that I would make purchasing a cell phone a top priority when I got my car back. I couldn't even call a tow truck, prompting me to consider abandoning my car at one of those places that says cars will be towed if left overnight. I didn't. I managed to get the car home after all, but it was an incredibly slow drive.
I still am amazed that the insurance company--named for one of the Roman gods, if you must know--has been working on this case for four years. I must say that I am impressed that the driver of the vehicle had to pay them back for all of the money he cost them. I know that, at the time of the accident, I certainly wanted to make him pay. My anger subsided a bit when all was taken care of by the insurance company, but I feel comforted knowing that he has been punished for boozing it up and getting the behind the wheel of an enormous tank and plowing down five cars parked on a street. There is a little bit of justice in the world after all.
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