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.

The appraiser just left. He was very kind. He walked around Miranda and documented all the existing damage and made me list all her options, including the solar panel. He couldn’t tell me anything, only that he will make his report and recommendation to the adjuster. He looked at the invoice for the brake service and agreed that I wasn’t anywhere due for that kind of work again. I told him that I won’t let the mechanic start until there is an okay from the insurance company because I am not going to pay for this work even if it means having to sue. I am through being a pushover.

I will confess that I’ve been holding it together since this happened, but I lost it with him. I didn’t realise just how worried I was that, because of Miranda’s age, the insurance company might decide to just write her off. The way the guy was talking and asking me questions and hemming and hawing, the fear just became too much. I was absolutely mortified, but that was enough to push him to reassure me that he saw no evidence for that and that the rig will easily be road worthy again.

The rental car situation is approaching resolution and I’m hoping to get the car by noonish. I can’t check into the hotel till four (they are booked solid), so I’d like to be on the road by three. I’ll shower, have a nap, and then pick up my friend around 7. So the day might not be a total write-off after all.

I’m hoping to get a good night’s sleep there, then spend the afternoon with my friend. Her mom is making dinner for me Friday night and you have no idea how much I will appreciate a home cooked meal. I have barely eaten anything since the car wreck. Part of it is nerves, part of it is that there is so much stuff crammed into the front of the rig that cooking just isn’t pleasant. Thank goodness that I can pretty much live off peanut butter sandwiches and that they are a reasonably healthy meal. 🙂

Right now, the big concern is that I need to leave Virginia on May 12th to make it back to Canada on the 15th at a reasonable pace. I can get to Canada on the 18th and still make my deadline there, but I told US Customs that I would be out on the 15th. I don’t know if that’s something that can be stretched with a phone call due to extraordinary circumstances, but I have a full week to worry about that.

I’m off to try the car rental company again. For some reason (probably my area code), my insurance adjuster’s request got routed to Bismarck, ND, so now the folks down the street here need to get hold of the folks in Bismarck to get all the information. It’ll be fine; I’m just glad I got the ball rolling yesterday. Enterprise car rental has never let me down.

I spoke to Aviva this morning. They have authorized me up to $1,000 (up to $100 per day) for a hotel room. Intact is letting me have a car for a few days, but they haven’t decided yet for how long. I have to pay for the hotel out of pocket and wait to be reimbursed, so I only booked until Monday morning because money is suddenly very, very, very tight.

The adjuster for Aviva says that even if the damage is a result of the accident, they may rule against me because I drove without having the rig properly inspected and may have made more damage. I am going to play the ‘look at how much free advertising you guys get from me’ card, especially since the repairs aren’t going to be that much from their perspective. I mean, the hotel amount is ‘just $1,000.’

I have certain things to do today and into tomorrow that require my undivided attention. I hope to leave for the hotel late tomorrow afternoon, freshen up (a shower is going to feel so nice!), then meet up with my friend for our evening. I will sleep at the hotel on Thursday night, but will probably just use it during the day over the weekend.

What. A. Nightmare.