Daria Doering

It all started when we invited a few friends over for a bonfire in our backyard.  As we sat around the fire pit talking, one of our friends suddenly fell through our old canvas chair she was sitting in, and was unceremoniously pinned within the chair frame, with her butt on the ground and feet in the air!  We managed, with some difficulty, to pull her out, and she was okay.

But the next day I woke up thinking about how embarrassing, not to mention unsafe, this incident had been, and that we must buy more of those cheap but sturdy resin Adirondack chairs.  Mike said they had them at the hardware store in Coronado.  So we drove there in both our cars, since we knew it would be hard to fit them into either our Prius or Corolla.  Mike managed to jam the four chairs into my Prius, and tie the trunk door partially down with rope.

On the way home, as we were crossing the Coronado Bridge, with Mike trailing me, he called to tell me that something had come loose, and I should pull over as soon as possible.  However I didn’t see anyplace to pull over.  And it all felt pretty secure … I had the feeling the arrangement would hold together till we got home … so I kept going.  I was almost out of gas though, so I pulled into the gas station near our house.

The gas station was pretty crowded, so I had to drive around some cars to get to an empty pump.  Maybe I was nerve-wracked by the whole process of driving home, while disobeying my husband’s instructions, and hoping my cargo would not fall out all over the freeway!  Anyway, I brushed against the retaining wall at the perimeter of the gas station as I drove around the cars.

A female employee rushed over to me, waving her arms and yelling, “Look at your car, look at your car!”  Being accustomed, as I am, to ignoring small fender-benders and scrapes, I told her “Oh, it’s okay,” and waved her away.  She started exclaiming again, and again I reassured her and waved her away.  I started gassing the car, and then saw Mike, and walked over to the other side of my car to talk to him.  

At that point, I saw what the woman had been exclaiming about.  My car had sustained major damage from what had felt like just a tiny brush against the retaining wall.  The bumper, fender and headlight were hanging by a thread!  I stared in shock, as Mike removed the headlight and put it in my front seat.

Then I remembered that I had switched our car insurance only a week earlier.  After probably 30 years with 21^stCentury, I had switched us to Geico, for its better price and coverage.  However I realized in an instant that it might seem suspicious that I gotten into an accident right after switching … they might think I had only signed on to get my car repaired.  I suddenly realized that the exclaiming woman might be an important witness, to confirm the date of the accident.

So I went to the office to ask for her contact information, but she wasn’t there.  I asked the other employee about her, and she acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about.  The manager came out, and they both looked at me like I was crazy.  Mike was also giving me funny looks.  After a few minutes, I said, “Okay, forget it,” figuring she must have been wearing a uniform from another job, and hoping I would be okay without a witness. 

So I filed my claim, got an estimate from an auto body shop, and an appointment to get my car fixed.  Then came The Phone Call.  “Mrs. Doering, we noticed that you filed your claim only a week after signing up with Geico.  We need you to talk to our blah-blah department to confirm some details.”  Oh no.  How did I know this was going to happen.

I talked to the woman at the fraud unit, or whatever it was.  She told me, “Most gas stations have observation cameras.  The best thing would be for you to go to the gas station and locate video footage that would establish the date of your accident.”  I thought – yeah, sure, they’re going to have video footage of an accident that happened a week ago, at the perimeter of their gas station … fat chance.  But maybe one of the women who had been in the office would be there, and remember that I was asking about the person who was a witness … maybe someone could corroborate my story.

So I drove to the gas station, hoping against hope that something would work out, and contemplating what might happen if it didn’t.  I entered the office and asked if they had observation cameras near the retaining wall.  As expected, no, they didn’t, they only had cameras right in front of the office.  

But then a miracle happened.  I looked up and there was the woman who had witnessed the accident!  I asked her if she remembered, and she did, and was happy to give me her contact information.  Of course then the manager told her not to, claiming that I was going to try to hold the gas station responsible for the damage to my car.  I assured her that was not what was going on, so she finally agreed that I could have the employee’s contact information.  The employee also explained that she had been leaving her shift when she witnessed my accident, and maybe that’s why the confusion had ensued.  At any rate, the insurance person called her, and everything was straightened out.  Yay!

But that was not to be the end of my insurance woes.  About a week later, I was going through my mail (which I like to put off for as long as possible), and came across a letter saying that the insurance on one of our rentals had been cancelled.  Oh god, my worst nightmare!  I was amazed that this cancellation was done with no warning whatsoever, especially since it was automatically paid out of the escrow account with our mortgage company.  But we had just refinanced this house, so the payment must have fallen through the cracks between the old and new mortgage company.

So I got on the phone, frantically calling the insurance company to get the policy reinstated.  But it was a Saturday, so it was closed.  After my attempts to pay online were rejected, I finally managed to pay for the entire year’s coverage over the phone with a credit card, on an automated line, and made myself a note to call again on Monday.

First thing Monday I started calling … first the insurance company, who said the policy needed to be reinstated through my insurance agent.  Then the agent, who got the policy mostly reinstated, but said I had to call the insurance company again, and give them a verbal assurance that there had been no claims during the 17-day period when our coverage was lapsed.  

So I called and gave this verbal statement, and was told that next I must email the declarations page to my mortgage company at a specific email address.  Good thing I had insisted the first person email me a copy of my reinstated policy, which they would not have done otherwise.

So I downloaded the policy and sent it to the email address I was given, only to receive an automated answer stating that “For your own protection, we do not communicate through email.  Please go to our website and contact us through our secure server.”  However the email did not give the URL for their website!  I did a web search, but could not locate any websites that resembled their email address.

So I had to call the insurance company back.  Each of these phone calls entailed probably ten minutes on hold.  By this time I had spent hours on this project, and was fuming.  I told the person who answered that it would be nice if they did not tell me to email the policy to an address that did not accept emails.  She said, “Oh no, you don’t email it at all, just go to the mycoverage.com website, and upload your declarations page there.”  So I did this, and it seemed to work. 

No more than thirty minutes after completing this hours-long project of reinstating the insurance, I received the following text from our tenant at that house: 

“Hi Daria, we had some hail yesterday. Today, some of the neighbors have submitted claims on their roofs. Just wanted to alert you that maybe you may want some to take a look at this roof.”  

Jesus Christ.  How had I known?  The main reason to submit insurance claims in Colorado is roofs destroyed by hail.  This hail event had happened one day before I got the policy reinstated.  

At this point I was tearing my hair out, or feeling like it, and updated my husband.  He said, “Wait until it hails again, and then submit a claim.”  Well, that might be a plan.

However I looked online at a website that lists hail events, hail sizes, and dates.  I found that for the city in Colorado where this rental is located, it generally hails on only one day per year.  Naturally, it was the day before the policy was reinstated.  I was screwed.

A day later, the tenant contacted me again, saying that the roof was definitely leaking, and a certain place in the house was wet.    

My latest reframe of this disaster is that I have been having trouble with landlord insurance for some time.  I had switched some houses to Traveler’s, but they jacked their rates way up after the first year, so I was anxious to dump them as soon as possible.  I had called my preferred insurer, HIPPO, but was told that I had too many claims (due to other hail damaged roofs), so they could not insure us.  Upon questioning, they said that one of the claims would drop off in July, and I could try again then.  So I have been counting the days until July.  

So my final thinking is – if I did file a claim for this roof, then I would be stuck with Traveler’s for god knows how much longer.  And that would probably cost me more than repairing this roof out of pocket!