Every Day Brings New Frustrations

Everyday since our little fender bender on March 31, I have been on the phone with Allstate Insurance who covers the woman who smacked my trunk lid. Sometimes twice a day and a couple a times more than twice. But not today.

If they were hoping that I might develop amnesia, forgetting about my claim, from beating my head against the obstacles they have thrown at me, they were almost right.

At first they refused to do anything without getting the accident report from their agent. South Carolina law says that you have 15 days to turn in the report to your insurance company, so you can guess when the person at fault will be turning it in. After 4 days I finally got them to agree to accept my copy if it was faxed from my agent to theirs and then their agent would fax it to them. When they got it last Wednesday they said that because they hadn’t actually talked to the driver yet, a manager had to OK it to assign liability and that might take up to 3 days!

In this time I have called the 1-800 number for Allstate Claims about 8 times and had spoken to 8 different people with varying hoops to jump through or bits of advice, including one kindly southern old lady who suggested that I make the claim against my insurance and let the 2 companies fight it out. Right!?! I had also spoken to the local agent who insured the vehicle several times and they have been as nice as they can be, but keep running into the same walls as me. They have tried to contact the insured on several occasion and keep getting a busy signal or no answer. The Allstate Claims office had gotten the same non-responsiveness. They had even sent a letter to them, but nothing yet.

Thursday, 6 days after the event, the driver turns in the accident report. But claiming time constraints cannot talk to the claims office. Finally on Friday the local agent gets the driver on the phone and connects them to the claims office. When I contact the claims office it turns out that talking to the driver was not entirely enough. She is not specifically mentioned on the insurance, so now the insured (mom or dad) has to be contacted to be sure she had permission to drive the car. Jeez, if not, that is a whole ‘nother department and the 10th different person I have spoken to at 1-800 claims office says that might take weeks.

Over the weekend we make no progress contacting the insured and even take a step back when the “manager” determines that he needs a real accident report, not just the basic exchange of information form that got filled out at the time of the incident. I kindly explain to the customer service rep, which I know will do no good, that is all they are going to get because both vehicles were drivable and no one was injured.

Yesterday, Monday, day 10, we have a breakthrough, my pestering the local agent gets them to try the insured again, after all, how much manpower is Allstate going to commit to the job of contacting them anyway? The local folks get the insured hooked up with the 1-800 claims people. When she hangs up with them she calls me and says it looks good I should be hearing from the claims people later that day or tomorrow (which is today.)

So I don’t try and call them today for fear of tying up my phone and Allstate not being able to get through to me. So far, silence from the Good Hands people. I guess I’ll call tomorrow and see what the Excuse Du Jour is.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 108

Sayonara Mr. Coco

Yanked out the cocomats yesterday evening to vacuum the car and I left them out for good. I went ahead and put the tan OEM ones back in, even though they were slightly dirty.

I really loved the look of the black mats with the tan dots. Check this photo for a feel of them. The dark color broke up the vast expanse of light colored tan interior and the mats hid the dirt real well. On the downside, they shed short back fibers on the “carpet” and they started to come apart right where you place your first foot down when entering the car. The shedding I could handle and I worked around the fraying on the driver’s side by artfully snipping out the offending strays, but now that that malady has effected the passenger side too, it was time for them to come out.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 106

You Can’t Say Suck Anymore

The administration of this particular elementary school decided to start a more inclusive policy on which words were “bad” words. Among those initiated to the category was “suck” (when not referring to the principle of suction).

One day a child came up to the teacher to inform her that one of the other students had said a bad word.

“What was the bad word he said?” asked the teacher.

“I can’t say it.”

“It’s ok to tell me, you won’t get in trouble for it.”

“No, it’s too bad, I don’t want to say it”

“Well I have to know what he said in order to punish him. Can you tell me what it is without saying it?”

“Well… it rhymes with ‘fuck'”

I Hope The Pine Pollen Is Gone

I did a test on Friday, but the results were inconclusive. I took a swiffer cloth and wiped a stripe clean on the center of the dash at lunch time. With the top down and the wind blowing, the dash stayed really clean. Unfortunately the wind was blowing straight on, so the dash was really protected. We got a nice big rain on Saturday which is always a help.

Today I washed the car.

I hope the pine pollen is gone for a couple of reasons, 1) I like a clean car and 2) if Allstate comes through and admits liability, I will be getting the car painted and we don’t want any of those little yellow vesiculate pollen grains getting under the finish.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 104

Masters’ Schwag

Donna and I don’t golf. We really don’t even like the sport. The only thing we do like about it, is one day we might live on a golf course (just so we have someone else take care of our backyard.) We don’t follow golf except for one little tournament, for four days during the first week in April the TV is tuned to coverage of the Masters.

We moved to Aiken in May of 1989 and in the spring of the following year we attended a Masters’ practice round. In those days practice round tickets were unlimited, you walked up to the gate on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday and $5 got you in. This went on for 2 or 3 years and in an attempt to mellow out the rowdy Par 3 crowd and reduce the traffic surrounding the course the Masters organization decided to limit the attendance each day to some super-secret number. The use a lottery system to dole out the tickets, Donna and I got tickets for the next two years and have been shut-out ever since.

In one of those first visits I bought a really nice ball cap. A perfectly shaped brushed twill that had a dark green body and a navy bill with the word Masters in script embroidered in white on it. I wore that thing out. Well figuratively at least. Every year I hope anxiously that we will get an invite to the ball, so I can get a new hat and every year the wicked step mom denies us.

There is a little gift shop by the main gate that you can buy official merchandise at, but there is a very limited selection of stuff to choose from. I’ve been holding out on getting an exact replacement, so I left that option off the table, until now. This morning I could stand it no longer. Donna and I drove over to Augusta, parked about a mile from the National in a Kroger parking lot and walked over to buy me a hat.

The selection was so small I almost didn’t want to buy any of the available hats. But, we came all this way, so I grabbed a black ball cap with a small Masters’ logo in yellow and a tiny little green embroidered “Masters.” It won’t become the hat that sits on my head every time I leave the house, but it will make it into heavy rotation.

Mmmm…Pizza

Mmmm?PizzaWe were supposed to go up to Kershaw, SC today to see fellow MMC member John Haff race POS in the SCCA Solo I & II event there, but we didn’t make the trip. The weather was listed as iffy all week and this morning we checked the radar and figured that we were going to have a very rainy day and that Kershaw probably would too. I’m sure John, who with his wife Carol were already up there, got in some laps because it looked like they didn’t get wet until a little after noon time. A couple other couples from the Club were also planning on going, but I don’t know if they made the wet drive up or not.

We mostly hung around the house and listened to the rain hit the roof. I sorted through nearly all of 4,000 photos in the My Pictures directory and renamed, resorted and arranged in directories. I still have about 350 in the “Photo Dump” directory that need sorting or more like deleting. While I worked on the digital pictures Donna sorted through a bunch more of the old photos in the Big Box of Morrison Memories. Included in there was another blast from from the Miata past. About a month after picking up our first Miata, a 1990 Mariner Blue A package, we drove down to New Orleans for Christmas. I don’t remember what I got for a present that year (if you don’t count the new car), but the Miata got a cracked windshield on I-20/59 in Alabama.

After the rains cleared here this evening Donna and I went downtown to get some pizza at Ferrando’s. While not the pinnacle of the pizza peak, the pie from Ferrando’s is right up there past the tree line and there is none better in Aiken.

Started down, went up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 101

Kind Of Like Bankers Hours, Only Better

After our first consult with the Oncologist last week he outlined a course of treatment to rid Donna of any cancer. First up is systemic treatment with 4 rounds of adriamycin & cytoxin 3 weeks apart. After that it is localized treatment consisting of 6 weeks of radiation blasted at her breast.

Both of the chemo drugs list hair loss as a side effect, so to get prepared for that eventuality we visited the little boutique at the Cancer Center on Thursday. We had a about three hours to kill while waiting for the radioactive tracer to get distributed throughout her body for a bone scan test. With the help of the nice lady that runs the place, Donna tried on a whole bunch of styles of turbans, scarves, hats and such. We picked out two neat turbans, two more dressier hat/bonnets for work, a nice little cotton beanie for sleeping and under ball caps. Although Donna liked the scarf option they seemed a little tricky to get looking right. The last item we picked out was a small hair piece 6″ wide with about 4″ of hair to simulate bangs that give a more natural look to the other items.

The shop keeper took a copy of Donna’s insurance card and said she’d call and see if our items would be covered. We when back to the hospital and finished up the bone scan, etc. We then went home and had lunch. The woman called shortly thereafter to say that our insurance didn’t cover those kinds of things. We told her we still wanted to buy the items and would come over later to pick them up.

Donna called at about 4 o’clock to see how late they were open and was told the store was closing. Oh, well, no problem we’ll come over and get them tomorrow she told the woman. Tomorrow was today, so we took a lunchtime ride over and guess what? Right, the store closed at noon on Friday. The woman at the front desk had our stuff in a bag for us, but couldn’t take a charge card.

I guess we’ll try again Monday at lunch. We will call before we drive over though, as with our luck, the place is probably only open in the afternoons on Monday…

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 98