I have been driving around this last week in a cute, zippy little Hyundai i30. I have named it "the little red ROO" because its number plate had the numbers and then ROO.
Cute huh? And it goes faster... 'coz it's red! ;)
On the day that we took our car in to be repaired and picked up our hire car there was a little incident. Nothing too serious.
Not even two hours into the hire period I had parked it to run some errands. I came out of the bank and looked across the street to where it was parallel parked. I saw a small green hatchback parked behind it and the driver was about to leave. It was very close to the back of my car and I was suspicious. (Working in car insurance will do that to ya.) I had my mobile phone in my hand and quickly switched it to camera and snapped a pic showing the car behind my car and how very close it was to my car (feeling protective of the car in my care). I then took two steps to my left so I could read his number plate off the back of his car. I memorised it and watched him pull out. He didn't even back up to give himself more room. He just pulled out. It looked very close from where I was but I couldn't tell if he had just hit or just missed my car. I wrote the rego number in my diary and went onto my next errand. I figured that he must have just missed since he didn't stop to leave his details... wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt.
A short while later I returned to my car to confirm that he did in fact HIT the car; my cute, little, red ROO hire car. Working in claims I can just hear it now... "but I only just touched it. How can it cost that much??" sigh.
He left some of his green paint in exchange for some of my red paint.
Not even TWO HOURS had the little red ROO been in my possession!!
above is the slightly blurry close-up.
below is the clearer pic taken a bit further back.
The damage is minor.
The point, however, is that there is damage.
I did all the obligatory: called and reported it to the hire company and lodged another claim. My excess was waived since I had seen it happen and had a photo as well as his rego.
I am yet to decide if I will bother to make a police report. The police advised me that I am not obliged to report it but that if I do he will receive a fine for leaving the scene of an accident without exchanging details. Part of me wants to see him learn a hard lesson. Part of me still wants to give him the benefit of the doubt and not add to his financial outlay.
I will ring my insurance company back and see if he has accepted the news with good grace or if he is trying to fight it or be difficult. If he is being awful about it, I will make life a bit harder for him as getting caught isn't always enough of a lesson and he may try to do it to someone else.
Like I needed any more car related dramas. Oh well.
No comments:
Post a Comment