Calling the insurance company

Not looking forward to this. I am very tired, and my speech is slurred, my face is numb and twitching, I’ve been sleeping on my arms wrong, and the fingers on both hands are stiff with pins and needles, and I’m having difficulty putting ideas together coherently.

I’ll give it a try and go ahead and make the call. I tend to get better, once I get warmed up, anyway. I’ve got my notebook where I’ll keep my notes and keep everything organized. I have some slips of paper I wrote notes on, and I’ll transfer them to my notebook, so I keep organized. I’m really out of it and disoriented. Things always get worse in the days after. When you’re in the thick of things, everything is a blur. Later, when things calm down, is when the extended problems start.

Fortunately, I got some great tips from someone I met yesterday who told me to go to www.nada.com and get the “Clean Retail” value of my car, then call the insurance company and definitely do not settle for their offer, if they total the vehicle. They told me about different tricks the insurance company tries, like telling me they’ll pick up the vehicle and taking it to their lot, and then just sitting on it, while I wait for my settlement. I also need to find out if I have rental coverage.

I’m not sure how this will turn out. I don’t know if the car is worth saving, or if we should just get a new(er) one. I really don’t know. I don’t have enough information yet.

The airbags went off, so apparently insurance companies tend to total vehicles when that happened. Also, when I went to the tow yard and cleaned it out, there were pieces of interior that were twisted and bent, that shouldn’t have been, so that looks to me like frame damage. If you hit the front of your vehicle, and one side of the back bumper is pushed out and back, I’m guessing there’s more going on than front-end damage.

Anyway, I have a huge day ahead of me. I have some critical meetings happening, and I also need to make some important calls. It’s not a small thing, this day, and I’m not really feeling up to it. But I’ll do it anyway, as best I can.

Off I go, to talk to the insurance folks.