Tomorrow is Stoli’s turn at the vet (hopefully, if they can get her in). She’s fine for the most part and just needs her annual exam and vaccinations. She isn’t due until February but the increased scooting and smelling she’s doing is prompting me to take her in earlier. No way I can spend 16 hours in the car with her doing that. I’m hoping that everything else with her is fine and she won’t have to go back for another year. It’s already been an expensive month.
Tuesday, Casey met Brady and I at the Infiniti dealership after I dropped off the truck for an oil change and state inspection. We went to lunch at Panda Express (which wasn’t very good or much fun – Brady liked the bears and the balls on the ceiling but that’s about it) and then to Amy’s for ice cream. Ice cream in 50 degree weather when we didn’t have coats probably wasn’t a good idea but it sounded good and I was hoping it would pacify Brady a while longer. We hung out at the playground long enough for me to finish what turned into my ice cream (Mexican vanilla – yum!) before retreating back into the car and out of the cold. We drove back to the Infiniti dealership hoping that they would call and say the truck was ready (it’d been an hour by this point which was the estimate they had given me) but it was nap time and Brady started getting restless so we started driving around for awhile for her to fall asleep. While we were driving I told Casey I felt bad that he was driving around in a death trap and he said he felt even worse when Brady and I had to ride in there too because it just isn’t safe. We made our way back to the Infiniti dealership waited for awhile longer and I finally had to call to check on the FX just as it was ready. We made the car seat swap and headed home while Casey headed back to work (later than anticipated). Well he ended up not getting back to work til even later because as he was turning off of Burnett onto Koenig, the car behind him rear ended him and pushed him into the car in front of him. He’s ok – his neck hurt at first and he had a headache but since is feeling fine. They waited on the scene for almost two hours for the cops to show and when they did, the cop didn’t even take a report, just gave them forms and told them they could mail it in or do it online. A lot of help they were – ATX police department fail!
After filing an initial report with USAA, Casey was told that the guy he was speaking with was in Colorado and unable to finish processing his claim and he’d be contacted in the next 24-48 hours by someone in Texas. Friday afternoon Casey still hadn’t heard from them and ended up calling them, then the rep called back while he was in a meeting, then he returned her call only to have her gone for the weekend. Casey was pretty pissed considering how long we’ve been with USAA and all the business we give them and called someone else looking to get the issue resolved and ball rolling on things. Apparently since we have liability only on the car, there’s nothing else that they can will do and we have to take care of coordinating with the other insurance companies separately. Why couldn’t the guy in Colorado have said this?! I don’t think being in a different state would effect the answer given. So Casey made the report with Allstate on Friday night, three days after the accident happened so now it’s more waiting. Casey’s planning to talk to a USAA supervisor tomorrow to get this issue resolved because they most definitely dropped the ball on this one.
Our thoughts are that Allstate is actually going to get off cheap on this one since our car is so old. Our assumption is that they’ll consider the car totaled because the damage to the front and rear of the car (not to mention the weird noises the car makes) will cost more to repair than the car is worth (we estimate about $400). Casey bought the car when it was 5 years old with 40,000 miles on it. We’ve now owned it for 11 years and it has 170,000 miles on it. That car has had a good run and I can’t say I’m sorry to see it go. Oh and the bonus of them considering the car totaled? They’ll tow it away!
I guess it’s Murphy’s Law that when things start looking up, be prepared for him to strike. Fortunately we paid off the FX a month ago so we’ll only have one payment when we get a new car. We’re hoping to hold off until after the holidays to save up some cash for a downpayment. It looks like another Civic, Accord, or Altima is in our future!