A Car Update

[kaasirpent]

I just got a call from Rudy, the guy at the body shop working on my car. The Geico adjuster just left after having given his estimate. "He's basing this amount only on what he can see, and we're going to order parts based on this estimate." Then, once they get the parts, they'll take the car apart and if there's anything else, they'll call the Geico guy back and he'll come back out and adjust his estimate.

That's about what I was expecting. This is, after all, not a bustling metropolitan area. A lot of Good Ol' Boy business etiquette goes on in "small" towns: shakes hands and trust the guy. After all, you know where he lives. And probably where he goes to church. And you're probably married to his second cousin once removed. Hell, you may be his second cousin, once removed. :)

That means they can start the work today, which means a faster turnaround, which means less time I have to spend in this godforsaken Cobalt rental car.

In 2005, if you had told me that I would be almost incapable of driving a car without cruise control, I would have laughed my head off at you.

And <whine>I have to manually lock the doors, roll down the windows, and adjust the mirrors!</whine> At least it does have a direct hook-up for my iPod. Without that little feature, 3-hour drive or not, I'd be back at the Enterprise Rent-a-Car in Anniston/Oxford saying, "You got anything else?"

Oh, you're probably wondering what said estimate was.

$2639.51

I have to admit, I started laughing at the 51 cents. I couldn't help it. It's just so hilariously precise. Like Commander Data used to be in Star Trek: The Next Generation. "Captain, we will arrive at Rho Melvana VII in 3 days, 17 hours, 25 minutes, 17.39269293376 seconds at warp 2."¹

My father was a contractor, and occasionally he would calculate the total cost for some job and it would come out exactly to some dollar amount, or to .50 or .95, which sound suspiciously like guesstimates. So he told me that he would always kick the estimate up or down a few cents just so the client would feel like it was an actual estimate and wouldn't suspect Daddy had just fudged the numbers. Paging Irony, line 4. Please pick up the white courtesy phone.

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1. You can't really blame them for then having Picard say, "Helm, set course for Rho Melvana VII at warp whatever will get us there fast enough to avoid another 11-digits-of-precision recitation from Commander Data."

Comments

re: estimate

[etherial.livejournal.com]

This word, I do no think it means what they think it means.

[scirocco.livejournal.com]

That kind of "estimate only what I can see" thing isn't just small town, they did the same thing with us here when our car got mashed up, and we live outside said bustling metropolis.

[kaasirpent]

Well, the small town remark was more about the insurance guy more or less trusting the mechanic and/or vice versa. Like I said, they probably know each other. :)

The time before when I had the bad accident on the same stretch of road, I had the mechanics "get it drivable" so I could get back to Atlanta as quickly as possible. And they ended up fixing only the "what I can see" damage so that several years later, a love tap on the front of the car was enough to total it because it compounded the earlier damage that wasn't visible.

This time I decided to get it fixed right. Or we'll see, anyway. :)

[cfred.livejournal.com]

And you're probably married to his second cousin once removed. Hell, you may be his second cousin, once removed. :)

This is the rural South we're talking about. He's probably married to his second cousin, once removed. :)

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Oooch.