Bye,bye Altima

Well it was a good car while it lasted. A couple of weeks ago some Boulderite moron rear-ended us on the way to a party. Actually, we were on the way to a party, and he was on his cell phone, hence the moron reference. While filing the claim with his insurance company I strongly suggested that they double his rates given the circumstances.

The picture here doesn't really do the damage justice since I used a jack to straighten things out enough to get the truck lid to close. I was amazed at how flimsy these cars are made, as it took virtually no force at all to bend the metal around. I actually bent the lid out by hand and yanked things around till the latch lined up. All and all about 10 mins work. Anyway we finally heard from the insurance company and they decided it was a total loss as the cost to repair exceeded the value. Actually not a bad outcome, since the insurance payout will far exceed the used car value if I were to sell it myself. Also the o'l girl has been developing a host of other minor problems, lately, and Cathy has lost confidence in it's reliability.

After going through this I now understand why insurance costs so much. It took at least 6 people to handle the claim. 1) I called up and gave all the info to someone, 2) They forwarded the info to someone else who called up and told me to get an estimate, 3) The second person forwarded the shop estimate to someone else to review, 3) The third person reviewed the estimate and decided the car was a total loss, 4) The second person called to tell me they were forwarding the decision to another person who would contact me to discuss payment, 5) The forth person called to offer the settlement and forwarded the case to another person to deal with the car title, and towing, 6) Person 5 calls to arrange car towing, and to have person 6 send out paperwork for getting the car title. A-hhhh... good old Yankee efficiency. Now, if we can just get this process out-sourced offshore, our rates will probably decrease 100%. (The only problem is we will never be able to understand the outcome of the claim when we try to talk to the adjusters.)