{"id":3789,"date":"2011-09-20T19:37:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T23:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/?p=3789"},"modified":"2011-09-21T10:30:28","modified_gmt":"2011-09-21T14:30:28","slug":"how-i-almost-left-ellen-for-catrina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2011\/09\/how-i-almost-left-ellen-for-catrina.html","title":{"rendered":"How I almost left Ellen for Catrina (and Kim is still speaking to me)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Women-Fighting-Over-a-Man\"<\/a>
Artist's Exaggerated Rendering of the Situation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It all started one dark and stormy night back in February. My miscreant son mistook the word “RAM” on the side of my truck for a verb and turned the ass end of an innocent mini-van into an abstract sculpture.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward seven months, and my auto insurance came up for renewal with a little surprise.\u00a0 Travelers decided to assess me a 39% surcharge for the next 39 months as a result of the winter mishap.<\/p>\n

My initial reaction was incredulity that a company I’d been a customer of since 1984 would be trying to extract a punitive charge for a relatively minor accident.\u00a0 Especially since my only other claim was in 1995, and the other guy’s company paid for that one in full.\u00a0 So I got right on the phone to Ellen at the agency and asked what this was about.<\/p>\n

Ellen has always treated me well, and she was quick to assure me that the charge was not punitive.\u00a0 Rather, it was an actuarial assessment of the now greater risk of another accident.\u00a0 I tried to wrap my head around this.\u00a0 After all, my son is not on my insurance policy.\u00a0 He borrowed the truck that night, and he doesn’t borrow it all that often.\u00a0 Clearly they weren’t saying his whoop-si-daisy somehow made me a riskier driver.\u00a0 So either they were assessing me a 39% penalty for my questionable judgement in whom I let drive my vehicle, or they were worried about some previously unknown quantum-gravitational attraction exerted by fresh paint such that my truck was now hopelessly attractive to other cars.<\/p>\n

Either way, I felt betrayed, jilted, and abused.\u00a0 As if three decades of loyalty had no meaning.\u00a0 So, I did what any man would do.\u00a0 I went trolling on the Internet looking for someone new.\u00a0 By the end of the weekend, I had found Catrina, a delightful woman who worked for State Farm.\u00a0 She was only too happy to console me, answer my questions, and provide quotes enticing enough to lure me away from my tarnished relationship with Travelers.\u00a0 The temptation of something new and cheaper was powerful.<\/p>\n

I called Ellen the next day to tell her I couldn’t go on like this.\u00a0 I wasn’t paying the surcharge, and if it didn’t come off, then we were through.\u00a0 I knew in my heart, if I wrote a check, Catrina would have me.\u00a0 But Ellen didn’t answer her phone.\u00a0 I left her messages. A whole day went by. Not a word.<\/p>\n

When I finally did hear from Ellen, she told me how she’d been working with others in her office, as well as the underwriter and the claims manager to get this resolved.\u00a0 She told of how she accidentally yelled “yahoo!” during a call with another customer when the email finally came in indicating Travelers had seen fit to waive my surcharge.\u00a0 My checkbook went all pitter-patter as Travelers was once again my least expensive option, and I do like it cheap.<\/p>\n

But now the hard part, I had to nip my blossoming relationship with State Farm in the bud.\u00a0 I contacted Catrina and told her the sordid tale of the “clerical error” Travelers made about who was driving that night. A misunderstanding that apparently caused our whole spat.\u00a0 I explained that I had agreed to take them back… but to be assured, they will be sleeping on the couch for a while.\u00a0 And should Travelers ever step out on me again, I will kick their butt to the curb and be giving her a call.<\/p>\n

She said she understood, and that if Travelers ever slipped up on me again, she would be there with tissues, a bottle of wine, a pint of Ben and Jerry\u2019s, and a stack of insurance binders ready for me to sign.<\/p>\n

The whole experience leaves me wondering… why do only friendly helpful women work for insurance agencies?\u00a0 Is this some sort of cosmic yin to the DMV’s yang?\u00a0 Is it some bizarre way for the universe to achieve a weird state of cordiality balance?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do only friendly helpful women work for insurance agencies? Is this some sort of cosmic yin to the DMV’s yang?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[139],"class_list":["post-3789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sliceoflife","tag-customer-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3789"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3824,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3789\/revisions\/3824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}