red-car

picture lifted here

My daughter came home yesterday from Flagstaff by way of Lake Mary but had to turn around because the road was closed due to snow. I had told her several times before her trip to check first the road closures in the area before proceeding home. Of course, she didn’t listen and assumed that the road was passable because the weather has been nice since the snow storm.

After driving half an hour into the road, she called us that she had to take an alternate route because like what I was afraid of, the road was closed. Hmmm, if she only listened, she would have saved a 40 minute-drive, and gas. It was 3:30 PM when she called.

I expected her to arrive around 6 PM via the long and winding route which she hasn’t driven alone before, so I was a little worried. I told her to call us if she needed help with  direction. I also prayed that she would have a safe journey home. At 5 PM, my eldest daughter and I drove to the mall in town to do some last minute shopping, and also to get my mind off L

From a distance on my way home,  I didn’t see her car parked along the driveway which worried me a bit. It was about 7 PM, and so the visibility was poor. As I turned on the street where I lived, I saw a red car stranded along the road in front of our house.   I suspected something was wrong as she normally doesn’t do this.

Me: L, why is your car parked like that outside? Why didn’t you park where you were supposed to?

L: The car quit working. I just barely made it to the gas station in town, and then it ran again until just right in the front of our house.

What a perfect timing because my husband just signed up for a road side assistance four days ago due to my prodding. He called the 1-800 to ask for help first thing in the morning. He couldn’t get through. He tried again, and he was put on hold for half an hour. I told him to dial again and maybe he would have better luck the second time around. Wrong! The line was busy.  Busy! Busy!  We dialed again, and again, and again, and no luck. This went on for an hour or so. We were getting agitated.

My husband called the insurance, where he signed up with, to complain about the service. She told him that he just had to wait for his turn because there might be tons of people calling. Huh? She wanted us to go through that same routine again by waiting for an hour or so by the phone, wasting our whole morning.

This time, I got up and used my cell phone to call the agent in town, upset. We exchanged words and I got hot under the collar. She insisted that I also wait for my turn as there could be a lot of people calling. I said, “look, if I am in the middle of nowhere and I do as you told, my cell phone is going to run out of battery. What good is it if I couldn’t get a hold of anybody?”  She said she was able to get through earlier. I told her that I would come over to her office that minute for her to show me how to get a hold of the sales representative because we couldn’t. And I also told her to try calling them, wait by the phone, and asked her to call me back, should she get through.

Evidently, she was unsuccessful, as well. Told her  so.

She called back, and said that it was alright to call a towing service in town as long as the fee was under $150, and that she would reimburse us for it.

It took two unpleasant calls before the agent caved in to option B.

Problem solved.

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