Towards the end of 2008 I had a very slight accident. I misjudged how quickly traffic was slowing, and tapped the bumper of the car in front of me. It was a BMW SUV, and I drive a Saturn Ion, so what really happened is that my front end hit the underside of the BMW’s bumper, scratching it. And that’s all. We pulled over, exchanged insurance information, and I honestly didn’t think much would come of it. There was more damage to my car than hers, and it wasn’t enough that I felt any need to fix it. I still haven’t, and you really can’t tell amid all the other random scrapes and scratches that I’ve accumulated over the last five years. I’ve done more damage to my car hitting it with a shopping cart.
Apparently, the woman in the BMW felt differently. She filed an insurance claim against me. We both had Progressive insurance, and I was contacted once about it. The representative I talked to (I do not remember her name) was baffled when the other driver flatly refused to deal with me directly, and instead forced the insurance claim through. By doing this, she screwed me over. Given that I would have gladly paid to fix the scratches, and said so, I can only imagine that she did this out of vindictiveness.
My insurance rate went up a bit, and when it came time to renew, no other company would offer me a better rate because of this incident on my record. Geiko, for example, would have been significantly cheaper than even our pre-incident rates, but not with that accident on my record. All in all, she’s managed to cost me maybe a thousand dollars. Aside from that one call, Progressive completely left me out of the process. I offered to let them look at my car so they could see how minor the damage was on my end, but never heard back. I also tried to call the claim rep, Michael Peterson, a few times but he apparently felt no need to get back to me. Excellent customer service there, Michael.
Our policy is coming up for renewal again in a few months, so I was looking over our current policy, and that incident. Turns out that Progressive paid out over $1100 to fix a scratched bumper. That’s absurd. Interestingly, the report also includes the other driver’s name: Kanchana Raman. A quick Google search reveals her to be the founder and CEO of Avion Systems Inc., a telecommunications company based in Roswell, GA. Here are a few informative links: http://www.avionsystems.com/Management.html http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kanchana-raman/6/b0b/963 http://www.gpb.org/taxonomy/term/791
Huh. So maybe Progressive just rolled over rather than deal with her attack lawyers? Maybe that’s a bit fanciful on my part, but she was hardly pleasant to talk to in person (though I had just hit her car…), and she did ram through a claim that the initial Progressive person thought wasn’t worth it.
In any case, I just wrote a rather snippy message to Progressive, taking them to task for paying out so much for a scratch, and for treating me like I didn’t matter in the whole process. Unless we simply can’t make it work financially, I can’t wait to tell Progressive to go to hell.
As for Ms. Raman: Thanks for fucking me over. If there is such a thing as karma in the world, with luck you’ll rear end someone even more mean spirited and capable of attack than yourself. I can only hope.
And me, I’m just really pissed off and can’t do a thing about it.
