Subject: continueing insurance battle....
Hi all,
Just filling you all in on the latest saga with State Farm. I called them
last night after not receiving there 'new' estimate of the damage cost.
The guy I spoke to was very off-hand with me (not the Mr. Tooze AGAIN type
of attitude) and didn't seem to care where my quote was. It turned out
that it had not been mailed.
I asked for the new estimate...the new grand total was ~$250 i.e., only
$100 more than the previous and still well short of the $1000 I had
been quoted by several places. I commented to him that I was
not prepared to have the fender fixed with bondo, and that I wanted
the car put back to its original condition before the damage. He said
thats what state farm were paying for. I repeated again that there was
no filler on the fender before the accident. He got his manager.
The manager said that they were paying to fix the car in the most economicly
viable way to restore the car to its original condition. I said its
original condition was without filler, and i wanted it repaired with new steel.
He suggested that my body repair guy had said he could beat ount the dents
and NOT use any filler!! I called my body guy to verify this and my body guy
laughed, and said noone in the world could repair my fender without filler.
I called State Farm back. The manager then gave two excuses 1) the car would
look like it did before so isn't that the same? 2) If I got new steel
from the manufacturer the panel would be likely to need small dings
filling.
I repeated it may look the same for option 1, but a magnet would tell
the truth if I decided to sell the car and his second reason was a bunch
of bullshit i.e., we'd just send the dented panel back if it were
received in such a condition.
Anyway, I didn't get much of a reaction out of him, so I concluded the
conversation by saing I would be writing to the insurance commision,
and he would hear from my lawyer in the next few weeks.
But wait....theres more. I decided to have a chat with the guy who did the
damage. I showed him the quotes of ~$1000 and told him that his
company was offering only $250 for bondo job. I told him
I was fed up with doing all the chasing because I was the victim and that
I was going to him to see if he would make good on the damage done
to the car. I then told him if he didn't pay I would have to sue him.
He seemed very apologetic and asked for a few days to see if he could
either 1) talk State Farm around (oh yeh, I thought good luck!) 2)
supplement the amount given by state farm out of his own pocket.
I think proposition 2) will be the most likely at this stage.
The guy at State Farm didn't seem that phased about threat of lawyers
but we'll see. However, the guy who did the damage did seem pretty phased
at the thought of lawyers.
Hopefully he'll cough up
Marcus
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