Two months on from my car accident and I am still doing battle with my insurance company over the $1000 excess that they have yet to pay out to me. This has made me somewhat grumpy as after initially paying the bulk of my car value out within 4 days with exceptional service and kindness, they have done nothing but procrastinate, whinge, moan and wriggle out of paying me the excess.

The problem lies with the fact that the guy who caused the accident had no insurance and did not own the car he was driving. Oh and the fact that he has now left the country, returning to Scotland and I'm pretty sure will never be seen in NZ again. That means liability shifts to the owner of the car, who also did not have insurance. Honestly, are these people courting trouble or just plain dumb? Anyway, it seems the owner of the car is an evasive wee customer and has failed to respond to any communication from the insurance company to accept liability (funny that since I probably would try my best to get out of it too). Admitidly the insurance company havent tried very hard = they have sent two letters and thats it as the car owner has no listed phone number and they dont seem terribly interested in digging very deep to locate her. I guess because to them a thousand dollars isnt much money and more to the point, I get the feeling they just dont really care.

Basically it all comes down to the insurance company having dug their toes in and said that even though the Police report clears me of any blame at all (just a case of wrong place, wrong time) they will not pay the excess until they have an admission of liability from someone. Even the insurance broker I have hired to deal with this (because I am sick to death of dealing with this - I just want my monies damnit!) has had very little joy.

So there I was, toodling home from the Supermarket tonight and happened to drive passed the site of the accident, as I do most days, and what do I see parked on the side of the street? The car that caused the accident up for sale (Pale blue/green Mitsi Mirage, 1987, Reg and WOF, $700 on Botanical Road if anyone is interested) with (and here's the important bit) contact phone numbers for the owner! (and thus reinforcing my belief that these people arent very smart). My insurance broker was quite excited at my playing detective and is going to bollock at the insurance company tomorrow morning. Fingers, toes, eyes and internal organs crossed that finally, finally, please God finally I will be paid out my excess asap...and then I am changing insurance companies.



*goes away to vent her frustrations on the cool memory game she found on the interweb today...I did do some useful stuff at work today, honest *