An accident
My car got hit by a driver that ran a red light a couple of weeks back. The damage was fairly minimal and everyone was okay, so that's good. Thankfully the other driver admitted fault right off the bat and then again to the police officer when he showed up. This made my life extremely easy in a situation that could've turned quite annoying had he tried to take advantage of the fact that I'm much younger than him. I hear horror stories of people getting screwed over by other drivers that were at fault by getting you to say things you shouldn't or pressuring them to settle instead of going through insurance. Thankfully I didn't have to deal with any of that.
The other guy's insurance company was pretty cool and handled things very professionally. They immediately got me set up with a free rental car for the duration of the case and promptly sent out a check written out in my name that I received just a couple of days after they sent it. I had the rental car for almost 2 weeks, and I miss it. It was a Kia Rondo and was a ton of fun to drive. I kept it until my car was repaired, returned it and then called the insurance company to let them know. That was that and everything was taken care of.
I found a cool little body shop in my city called Carmona's Collision Repair. The people there were super nice and got my car fixed in just a couple of hours. I didn't have them fix everything, but just make it drivable. They really just had to use a machine to pull out my wheel well a bit so that it stopped rubbing on my tire. The guys did this quickly, professionally, and at a fair price.
I got to keep a majority of the money that I received from the insurance company for myself (or wife's-self, more correctly). I wasn't interested in getting major repairs done since I'll probably just run this car into the ground until the wife's car is paid off next year and then get something new. Resale value isn't a huge factor since there's already some things wrong with the car that lower the value. The air conditioning hasn't worked for years, and it's probably in "fair" condition according to the Kelley Blue Book.
This insurance money couldn't come at a better time, actually. The wife's computer is on the fritz. It's restarting itself a couple of times a day for no reason. I've checked out the hardware and it seems good, so I'm guessing it's just given up. On top of that, Apple just released some new iMacs, and that's what she wants. She'll be getting the 27-inch, 3.06GHz model with the upgraded video card (ATI Radeon HD 4850 w/512MB). Unfortunately these aren't estimated to ship until November, but I'm placing the order right now.
As terrible as accidents can be, this one was thankfully mild and involved no injuries. I'm most thankful that nobody was hurt and that both cars were drivable, but the extra cash was nice too. Here's a picture of my damage:
The other guy's insurance company was pretty cool and handled things very professionally. They immediately got me set up with a free rental car for the duration of the case and promptly sent out a check written out in my name that I received just a couple of days after they sent it. I had the rental car for almost 2 weeks, and I miss it. It was a Kia Rondo and was a ton of fun to drive. I kept it until my car was repaired, returned it and then called the insurance company to let them know. That was that and everything was taken care of.
I found a cool little body shop in my city called Carmona's Collision Repair. The people there were super nice and got my car fixed in just a couple of hours. I didn't have them fix everything, but just make it drivable. They really just had to use a machine to pull out my wheel well a bit so that it stopped rubbing on my tire. The guys did this quickly, professionally, and at a fair price.
I got to keep a majority of the money that I received from the insurance company for myself (or wife's-self, more correctly). I wasn't interested in getting major repairs done since I'll probably just run this car into the ground until the wife's car is paid off next year and then get something new. Resale value isn't a huge factor since there's already some things wrong with the car that lower the value. The air conditioning hasn't worked for years, and it's probably in "fair" condition according to the Kelley Blue Book.
This insurance money couldn't come at a better time, actually. The wife's computer is on the fritz. It's restarting itself a couple of times a day for no reason. I've checked out the hardware and it seems good, so I'm guessing it's just given up. On top of that, Apple just released some new iMacs, and that's what she wants. She'll be getting the 27-inch, 3.06GHz model with the upgraded video card (ATI Radeon HD 4850 w/512MB). Unfortunately these aren't estimated to ship until November, but I'm placing the order right now.
As terrible as accidents can be, this one was thankfully mild and involved no injuries. I'm most thankful that nobody was hurt and that both cars were drivable, but the extra cash was nice too. Here's a picture of my damage:
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