I have a tale of woe.
I am waiting for the insurance company to tell us how much they will pay us for our car.
The story is this this:-
Friday is my cleaning day. Lucia usually works at home on Fridays - so I make sure I get going early. But, two Fridays ago Lucia had to go into the office. The result is that I got going quite late. When I finished cleaning (and because Lucia wan't at home), I decided to take the dogs for a long walk in Richmond to the far side of Richmond Park and back. As usual, I parked in Ranelagh Drive (in Richmond), next to the Richmond Lock & Weir, and walked through Richmond to the far side of Richmond Park.
But, owing to certain astro-physical phenomena, the moon was was the closest it has been to earth for several years. The result is that there was an exceptionally high tide: specifically, the tide at Richmond Lock & Weir was 5,5m above its mean level. I finally got back to the car about 30 minutes after high tide. At that point, the water was still was about a halfway up the passenger side of the car.
This from The London Evening Standard.
I had to wait about 15 minutes chatting away to an older couple in a similar predicament - waiting for the tide to recede - before I could approach my car. I took my boots off, rolled up my trousers, asked the older couple to hold onto the dogs, and waded along Ranelagh Drive (which was now essentially part of the River Thames) in my socks to get to the car. The water was fucking cold. When I opened the driver's door, the first thing I noticed was my iPad (with its keyboard cover) floating in the footwell. As a good South African, I had had it well hidden under the driver's seat in order not to tempt some nefarious bastard to break my window (not that that has ever happened to us here, or anybody else we know in the UK).
So, I drove home in my wet socks, with water sloshing around my feet - and started baling The Thames out of my vehicle. But then I had the great idea to call my insurance company - Honda "Happiness" - to see if I was covered for the loss of my iPad. Let me put it to you this way:- Honda insurance needs to reconsider the use of the word "happiness" in the name of their insurance company/brokerage/whatever ...
- First, I was put on hold for about 35 minutes to get hold of the underwriter
- Then I was put through to the wrong underwriter/insurer (because Honda UnHappiness had changed their underwriters)
- Then, somebody, somewhere put the phone down on me because I had become - shall we say - a bit excitable.
- Some two, maybe two-and-a-half hours later - I actually spoke to my real insurers: or should I say, that I spoke to someone who was only really interested in following the call centre script. (Do you want to make a claim, do you want to make a claim, do you want to make a claim .....)
- To cut a very long story short, I wasn't really covered for the iPad because because it wasn't really worth once we had paid the insurance excess.
On Saturday, Lucia and I continued baling out the car. I took it to valet service run by Serbians just up Uxbridge Road, near Ealing Hospital, so they could suck the carpets with their high-power vacuum cleaner. As I drove home, I noticed that the "SRS" light (the thing that does the airbags) had turned on. By the time I got home, other dashboard lights were flashing on and off. On Sunday, we couldn't get into the car because the remote wouldn't work - so I unlocked the car with the key. But then the alarm went off and wouldn't stop - so we called the RAC. The RAC man struggled to get to the siren in the boot area so that he could just unplug it. Removing panels in the boot area (where the siren is hidden) just revealed --- more water.
So, on Monday morning, I called the insurance company again - a much easier experience because I didn't have to go through Honda "Happiness". On Wednesday, the "salvage agents" came to fetch the car. I also received a letter from Zenith - our actual insurers - which started: Dear Mr Jones, We write to advise you that from the description of the damage when reporting your claim, we believe that your vehicle will be deemed a total loss ... etc
It's a week later, and I haven't heard from them yet. All our neighbours have heard the story (from each other) and they all say: NEVER accept the first offer from the insurance company. You HAVE to negotiate. I think I'll leave that to Lucia ...
L
