Taken for a Ride by my Auto Insurance Company

Ding, Dong, DingHello, Insurance Company X, you can kiss my a**! And for that matter, Auto Glass Company Z, you might as well join your little Insurance Company friend.

Last week while driving in a location to be undisclosed, I drove a little too closely behind a truck. Some gravelly shrapnel flew my way, and bing bang boom, I had three small dings on the windshield.

A week later I called my insurance company to make my claim. The sweet-sounding woman on the other end of the phone told me it would be no problem. I could have the dings replaced on the dime of my insurance company at the auto glass place of my choosing. She then transferred me to the glass department so I could get a claim number and a referral to a glass company. I took a couple of numbers down and made an appointment for an on-site visit from the auto-glass company.

A few days later, I woke up confused to a loud knock on my door. I put on some jeans and took my bed-headed self to answer it. The auto-glass guy was there and needed my keys. Great, at long last I would have my dings safely out of my car. After two minutes, he knocked on the door again to explain to me that one of the dings was larger than he had anticipated and it might be a problem to fix. Say what? The ding in question was no more than 1 inch in diameter and he was supposed to be a professional. Thinking it would be no problem, I told him to go ahead and fix it.

Four minutes later, he was back with terrific news. The large ding was fixed just fine, but while fixing the smaller ding, he had "run it", which means a ginormous crack which is slightly less than the size of a dollar bill in length now exists on my windshield. The entire fricking windshield now needs to be repaired, and guess who gets to pay the deductible?

I called both the glass company and the insurance company. I was transferred twice at the insurance company. Apparently, and let this be a word to the wise for you, if you get your dings repaired, you might just have to get your entire windshield replaced. I signed nothing to this effect; it was just assumed that I should know this.

The second person at the insurance company was "kind" enough to call the glass shop and the manager offered a discount for the windshield replacement. The insurance claims person was enthusiastic about the discount and urged me to go through this glass shop. The discount sounded great, until I realized that it was one dollar under the deductible, meaning that the insurance company would have to pay nothing, I would save nothing and that I would be paying a bucket load of cash for the "free" repair.  That's exactly why I love the insurance industry so much.

Hmmm, it kind of makes me wonder if there are any scams like this in the health insurance industry. I doubt it. Seriously, all I hear all day long is how honest insurance companies are. Of course, that's only on Fox News.