The Wonderful World of Car Insurance

We are still dealing with the aftermath of the Great April 30th Soda Spill AKA the accident that totaled Tattooed Dad's only new car that he loved and that he is still mourning. Sometimes, I hear him weep at night as the image of the rear axle dangling like a broken arm as the car was lifted up at the salvage yard and dumped down in front of him so he could retrieve the plates haunts his dreams. O.K., so I exaggerate.

We purchased a lovely preowned vehicle on Saturday. We drove up to the dealership in the minivan, a handmedown vehicle that's great because we don't have a car payment to make on it, but that is sloooowly falling apart. In fact, as we left for the dealership, one of the arms that holds up the rear door snapped at the hinge because it was completely rusted. "I'm not spending another cent on this car," I muttered. Anyway, an energetic salesman approached us at the lot. "We're only spending $20,000 on a car, preowned is fine, we want an Outback," I barked. He obliged and spent the next hour or so regaling us with stories about his race car hobby. Yawn. Snugs was appropriately impressed, and clutched the photos of the saleman's race cars in his sticky hands.

We're still dealing with the car insurance companies though. Do they think we'll just let them take our $500 collision deductible? Hello, we weren't at fault for this accident, so we'll just take that money back, thank you very much. And no, we don't want to pay the $200 overage for the 20 days of car rental either, considering that if SOMEONE hadn't spilled their soda, we wouldn't have been renting a car anyway! And no, we didn't really want to buy another car seat either, so we'll take reimbursement for that too. We currently have a "liability adjustor", "damage adjustor", and (my favorite) "payment recovery specialist" working on the case, and yet I'm still calling the insurance at least once a day. They probably see my number on caller id and hide.