Day: May 7, 2012

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Semantics

I just spoke with my insurance adjuster at Aviva for the motorhome. She wants the rear axle taken apart so the appraiser can go in and have a look at the guts of the damage. I’ll get back to that in a bit.

She and I disagree on the advice she gave me about going on down the road. She says that she told me and that I agreed that if anything else came up, it couldn’t be added to the claim. As I recall the conversation and look at the exhaustive notes I made in that conversation, I understood it to be that 180 days to file my claim and that if anything directly related to the accident came up, I could include it. I should have asked for clarification, I know. I was under stress.

My position still stands. I have more than enough proof that all the maintenance on my rig was up to date and nowhere near due again. The axle failed less than 400km and just a day after the accident. There is no way this is unrelated. Aviva should not be arguing with me. They should be telling me to get the rig fixed and that they’ll be submitting the bill to the other guy’s insurance.

I told the adjuster that I am not having the rig taken apart without knowing how the bill is going to be paid. The appraiser’s estimate is that there is $3,600 worth of damage total to Miranda, including the axle stuff, the bumper, and the hitch assembly. If $1,000 for a hotel is nothing, why are they arguing with me over less than $4,000, especially since Aviva is not going to have to pay? That said, I just spoke with the mechanic and he believes that it will costs heaps more than $3,600, plus the towing bill.

The adjuster is going to call me back later today or early tomorrow afternoon. I stressed the importance of my needing to be back on the road within the week and that our time zone difference is always setting us back a day. She promised to get back to me ASAP. She’s been good on that end and I don’t want to hear any negative thoughts about her at this point. She’s at the centre of a messy entanglement of multiple insurance companies and appraisers. I know she has a hard job to do and I’m not willing at this point to say that she has washed her hands of this case.

While, as I said, I am trying to remain on good terms with my adjuster, I can tell that it will be very difficult to get Aviva to go to bat for me. I have been insured with them for almost four years without filing a claim. They are the only company to offer a product for full-timers. So it’s not like I really have an alternative.

But I just checked my blog stats and there are more than 1,500 unique visitors to this site every week who are following this story. I spoke to more than 25,000 visitors about Aviva at the Early Bird RV Show in 2011. I have sold hundreds of copies of my ebook where I mention their product. In short, a good amount of their market, existing and future, for their Elite full-timing product is going to know about how this claim gets resolved.

I was going to offer them the courtesy of letting them know all this before I started to talk negatively about how they are handling my claim, but that would sound like blackmail. Fix this in my favour or I go public, so to speak. So I’ve gone public and hope that I will be able to come back and say that they did right by me without my having to go the “Do you have any idea who I am?!” route.

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An Indignant Meow

I just got back home. Neelix greeted me at the door with a rub against the legs and promptly informed me that the food and water dishes were low. Tabitha was lying on the bed in the study and stared at me as I entered the room. My “Hey, baby” sent her over the edge. She recoiled and let out an indignant meow that very clearly meant, “How dare you ‘baby’ me when you’ve been gone for two nights?!” I have had her for almost 12 years and she has never done this. She is also avoiding me. I guess she’s under more stress than I thought because I have left her for much longer periods of time. She’ll get over it by tonight if I know my girl.

I was just 20 minutes out from home when my cell phone rang. By the time I was able to pull over, I’d missed the call from an unidentified 403 phone number. I dialed it and got the appraiser for Intact about the car. He asked me about options and the value of the roof rack (which I forgot to tell him I saved, but will next time we speak) and the tow system. He said he should have some news for me by tonight. At this point, with all the opinions I’ve gotten about the photos, especially from the motorhome appraiser, I will not accept anything but a total loss on the car.

Since I am expecting the phone to ring a number of times over the next couple of days, I’m glad to stick around home. I’m going to try to make some sense of the chaos in here since it is now blessedly cool enough to do anything. The only place I intend to go before tomorrow night is Richmond if my new computer battery comes in.