Morton Fox's journal

I guess I can write about this now that I'm essentially done with the claims process and the repair.

May 7, evening: I was returning home from work, a bit later than usual. I was approaching the intersection of the main road and my street, about a quarter mile from home. Two cars ahead. Driver in front braked and made a sudden turn into the corner gas station. Driver ahead of me had to stop quickly too. Then I had to hit the brakes too. A second later, I felt something hit the back of my car hard. The driver behind and I both pulled over and parked at the gas station. Called the police to make a police report and exchanged insurance information. The other party was a lady with a toddler. No one was hurt. My car had some rear-end damage: bumper scratched and a bit dislodged, exhaust pushed in. The entire front of her car was crumpled.

May 8: Called State Farm, which was the other party's insurance, to make a claim. I usually file a claim against the other party's insurance first, although I'm not sure that's the best strategy. Probably not in this case.

June 3: Received a letter of denial from State Farm. In the weeks before getting the letter, I talked to the State Farm representative a few times and it appears the other party's insurance was not valid at the time of the collision. It took them most of the month to investigate because they needed to be sure before denying the claim.

June 6: Went to Price Collision to get a repair estimate. Submitted it to my own insurance. Because I have a letter of denial, I can file the claim under my uninsured motorist coverage with a lower deductible. They told me they'll go after the other party to recoup the loss and refund this deductible, but I don't have much hope for that.

June 19: Car in for repairs at Price Collision. Got a rental from Enterprise down the road. This time, the rental is a Toyota 4Runner, a huge land barge. Land barge has a lot of newfangled features and is interesting to drive, but acceleration is not as good and it is harder to park and maneuver.

June 27: Repairs completed. Got my car back. New bumper, new exhaust, just as good as it was prior to the collision.

The annoying thing is it took nearly two months to get back to normal. It may have been better to file the claim with my own insurance next time and let them negotiate with the other party's insurance, even if I have to pay a higher deductible up front. In my defense though, up until this incident, the other party's insurance was valid every time so there was no delay.

Utility workers dug up the street to put in the new gas pipeline and then filled it up again. They were done by early afternoon but I wasn't planning on going out anyway so I did some yardwork.

Spring growth is amazing. It took just over an hour of work to fill five bags with weeds and those weeds were just from the driveway side of the yard. After that, I checked some online plant listings to find out what those were. There was definitely a lot of purple deadnettle. It was growing in abundance in the shaded area by the side of the house. I've seen a few front yards around this neighborhood literally covered with it. I also saw some catchweed, bindweed, wild geranium, and wild onion. Didn't see nearly as much broadleaf plantain as I did last year, so semi-regular weeding does control some types of weeds.

Because state regulations required it, GEICO sent me an affidavit to fill out in order to cancel the auto insurance. They may not be expecting too many insurance cancellations from this state, so they haven't gotten all the bugs worked out yet. First, they provided a window envelope to return the form but there's no address on the form to show in the window of the envelope. Second, they didn't include the return address for this form anywhere in the mailing. I called them and found out that the actual address was a bit different from their usual "1 GEICO Blvd" address. Would've been easier if I could just scan and email it to them.

I set aside this afternoon (well, almost evening, really) to make some phone calls. One of those calls was to follow up on a preliminary insurance quote from AAA. The initial quote came in around $200 less than what I paid GEICO. After I called the insurance agent at AAA and told her I'd be switching my homeowner's insurance and umbrella policy over too, it went down even more, to about $270 below GEICO's rate. However, homeowner's insurance at AAA is $60 higher, which offsets that somewhat (although not by as much as it seems because the home insurance rate is a yearly amount, whereas auto is half-yearly) but I'd still save money by switching.

Next, I called GEICO to tell them about this quote and ask if they can offer any discounts to close the gap. I found out that the discounts they offer vary by state, so apparently, there was one discount I got in NJ that I'm not getting in DE. Weird. While going through the list of available discounts, I was tempted to ask if they had an AAA affiliate discount. :) Anyway, the customer rep couldn't offer me anything other than a discount for taking a defensive driver course, which I wouldn't have to take to get AAA's lower auto rate. So it looks like I'll have to switch.

Another option is to get auto insurance from AAA and homeowner's from GEICO since the latter is cheaper there. But that would be messier and probably won't save much because then I'd lose the multiline discount.

36°F this afternoon. Snowing/raining. Got a little tired of dealing with insurance and police all morning, so I went out to hit two geocaches at Garret Mountain Reservation in West Paterson. It actually stopped snowing for the duration of my trip out there, although it was still quite windy. What's in a name? was the first of the two. It was by a rocky cliff with a view of Paterson. While climbing towards the cache site, I slipped on some leaves and landed on the rock. Already, that's more injury than I got in the auto accident. :) In order to retrieve the cache, I had to walk down a rock crevice so it's a good thing I'm not too fat. (The cache owner himself almost didn't fit.) The second cache, Can you see me now? was a lot easier. It was just a quick grab off a residential road at the edge of the park.

Back to insurance matters: I called Encompass Insurance this morning. I had trouble reaching the insurance agent handling this claim but eventually she did call me. It sounds like they'll pay for the repair since their insured was at fault. My next step is to get an estimate from an auto body shop to replace the bumper and whatever else they find damaged. I also called River Edge PD but no one picked up the phone in the records department. It's possible that the records clerk had the day off. However, I don't expect the police report to be ready so soon anyway.

Did some work on TwitVim. In r36, I added a command to send a DM via the Twitter API. Previously, the only way you could do that in TwitVim was by using the "d username ..." special form. I added this enhancement mostly for identi.ca because their server did not support "d username ...". However, I found out today that they have recently added the "d username ..." functionality. Oh well. It'll still be useful for Laconica servers that haven't been upgraded.

Went to find park n ride this evening at the Wayne Rt 23 train station. Did that one because it was quick and it could be done at night. After that, I went to the Chinese supermarket in River Edge to stock up on a few items. That was the errand I decided not to do on Saturday because I was tired. Also got takeout dinner from there.

Aside from that, I had to deal with a dental insurance problem. Get this: The group policy number was the same as last year and so was my ID number. The only thing that changed was the name of the insurance company during their reorganization last year. Yet they denied the claim because I'm apparently not in their records any more. Ugh. Seems like they mess up every year at around this time.

Still in the midst of 2007 year-end accounting because not all account statements have come in yet. I don't know what I was so worried about all throughout the year because it turned out to be my best year ever. (not in percentage terms, but in absolute terms) Even while the stock market was getting clobbered by subprime problems, I was doing just fine with some good stock picks, a decent-sized hedge position, and sell discipline. Of course, I did realize quite a bit of capital gain and I'll pay for it in taxes closer to April, but I don't expect to owe more than I have cash reserves for. Judging by the first two weeks, it looks like 2008 will be another wild ride. I'm ready!