AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!
Grr! By the end of the day today I expect that I will be nothing more than a drooling pile of blubbering, muttering fool. Why? Well, phone tag. The most annoying game ever. Especially when it deals with getting my car fixed and getting a rental car which is extremely necessary at the moment. What happened, you ask? Well, flash back to yesterday.
***Insert flashback wavey image here***
My mother and father had been having problems with their cell phones so they decided to get new ones. Because of this I lucked out also and got one as well. However, being that they were purchasing the phones in Rhode Island and I'm in Florida, my new phone needed to be shipped down to me. With it being already activated I had no use of the cell phone at my disposal so I was shit out of luck if I needed to reach someone. Figures. The package was sent over night on Thursday to be at the UPS store tomorrow at noon. Being that I had registration for school, and we only had one car at our disposal which was being used by Ryan and Chad, I was stuck at home, having already completed registration, waiting for them to get home so I could go to the UPS Store and then to K-Mart to get food stuffs.
Chad and Ryan finally got home and so I dragged Chad back out to go to the stores with me. Leaving the K-Mart store and driving home I got into an accident. I had been turning left (with a turn arrow which was green) onto the main road out of the K-Mart Plaza and some elderly gentleman across the way, turning to his right (read: my left, hence turning in the same direction), hit me as he turned right but brought his Pick up truck into the left lane where I just happened to be. Oi. The side of my car is a mess, thankfully no one was hurt, though that could have gone way differently if he had succeeded in pushing me over the median and into oncoming traffic, which almost happened.
So, we turn off the road and pull into an empty parking lot. Now, by this time I was a mess. Crying, shaking, the works. Chad, thankfully, was doing much better than I was and so he got out of the car to talk to the guy, for sake of ease his name is Richard. Richard and Chad went off to call the cops and get them over to assess the situation. As for me, well, I was still a mess and hadn't even unbuckled my seat belt, never mind got out my registration and insurance information. Chad and Richard got back and I managed to calm down a bit once the cop showed up. I even managed to get out my information without too much information.
The cop decided to ask Richard what had happened first and, according to him, he had a green arrow to turn. Now, I don't know how many of you have noticed this, but the chances of both of us having a turn arrow at the same time, as well as the chances of him having a RIGHT turn arrow, are impossible. Intersections are just not made that way because if they were things like what happened to me would happen a lot more often than they already do. The cop obviously wasn't all that believing of his version of the story and so he came over to me where I told him what happened. He took both of our information (I'm still trying to stop shaking and crying at this point but I was able to give him an intelligible story) and went off into his cop car to do whatever it is they do in there.
About twenty tense minutes later he comes back out, an entire accident report filled out. He goes to Richard first and explains to him why he was at fault in the situation, not me, and told him that he would probably need to go to a driving school. I believe he was also issued a ticket, though I'm not positive. With that being done he sent Richard on his way and turned to talk to me. He handed me a paper that was the entire accident report filled out with all the information for both of our vehicles as well as clearly stating that it was, indeed, Richard's fault. Great. Fantastic. The cop was wonderful and he sent us on our way. Chad drove home because I was still shaking badly.
Thankfully we weren't even three minutes from our apartment. However, as we turned onto our road, a particularly ear-piercing metallic grinding noise came from the front right wheel area. Not a pleasant sound. Once home, and once I composed myself enough to be intelligible over the phone, I called my parents and left a message on the house phone. (While waiting for the cop to show up I had torn open my package to remove my new phone which had, not even, one bar of power and managed to text message my mother to let her know what happened.) Not too long after my mother called me from the restaurant that she and my father were eating at to make sure Chad and I were alright, which we are, and talked about a course of action, deciding that my father would call me when he got home and he'd help me get this mess straightened out.
So, my father took care of contacting Richard's insurance company last night and got that partially taken care of. I went to bed feeling slightly sore, physically, but none the worst for wear.
***Fast-forward to this morning***
The house phone starts to ring around 9 this morning, waking me up from a rather sound sleep. Being disgruntled that I was woken up against my will, I proceeded to ignore the phone call, trying to force myself to fall back asleep. However, sleep was not to be. A few moments later my cell phone started ringing, leaving me no choice but to answer it. Groggily, I sat up and answered my phone, trying to keep the irritation of having been woken up out of my voice. It was State Farm, Richard's insurance company, giving me the information and names of the people I needed to contact who could fix my car and get me a renal car.
Copying down these names I made my choice on which companies to go with (Orlando Collision Auto Body for the repairs to my car and Enterprise for my rental car) and proceeded to try and contact them. Well, I call the auto body a couple of times with no luck. There was no answer and, unless I was certain they were closed or not answering their phone, I wasn't going to leave a message and thus went forward to call Enterprise. Enterprise told me, that since I am under 25, I needed to have my insurance company and State Farm contact them and send over proof that a) I am insured with insurance carrying over to rental cars and b) my rental car is, indeed, being paid for by State Farm. Well, part "b" was completed with no problem, once I got off the phone with Enterprise and called back State Farm. Part "a" however is still being carried out.
Enterprise could not get in touch with my insurance company and, so, I then decided "Hey, my father will probably have a better chance of getting in touch with them then I will. I'll call him and ask." Well, I call his house phone and get the answering machine. Ok, I figure he may not have heard the phone, may have been in in the bathroom or whatnot so I don't leave a message and figure I'll call back in a few minutes. I do that and, yet again, I get the answering machine. I then call his cell phone. It's off. I'm shunted straight to voice mail. Great. Just peachy. He buys himself a new cell phone that works and it's off. Someone, please, give me the logic in that! Sigh. So, I call my mom. Straight to voice mail as well, which is odd because she, like me, never turns her phone off. I leave a voice mail with her, hoping one of them will get back to be shortly.
My phone rings, I flip it open, it's mom. She was in the bowels of Little Compton and had no service, thus her phone didn't ring on her end. Ok. Not a big deal. I told her what was going on and she said she'd try to reach dad and let him know was was going on. No luck. She calls me back and asks me to get the number of someone my parents know who helps handle our car issues, no matter what they are. I get the number for her, she calls, no answer. Se leaves a message and calls me back to let me know this. So, there we are, 1500 miles away and neither of us are able to get in touch with anyone who can help us. Lovely. So, we have no other choice but to wait for someone to call us back.
Dad signs online not long after this and tells me he was out mowing the lawn. Now, I'm glad that he got out of the house to do this but also a little frustrated because he knew that I was trying to get all this done and would probably need his help. I ask him to call my mom who asks him to look for our car insurance information and then fax it over to Enterprise so I can get a rental car.
By the time I got in touch with my father it was a little after 11 and Enterprise closes at noon. I don't think I'm going to get a rental car today or tomorrow, since Enterprise is closed tomorrow, and I have class Monday at 1:15. Well, it's now 11:39 and the final touches are just being carried out. My dad found the insurance information and is going to fax it over to Enterprise. My mom is going to call my dad and make sure he knows they close at noon. I'm going to crash for the rest of the day and try not to go crazy. Maybe I'll make Chad make me food, since I haven't gotten a chance to eat yet today. Nearly three hours after I was so rudely, but necessarily, woken up. Hopefully I won't have to make any more phone calls today or talk with anyone I don't know, since I hate doing both, but everyone I talked to was helpful and explained things to me very clearly.
I never want to go through this again.
***Insert flashback wavey image here***
My mother and father had been having problems with their cell phones so they decided to get new ones. Because of this I lucked out also and got one as well. However, being that they were purchasing the phones in Rhode Island and I'm in Florida, my new phone needed to be shipped down to me. With it being already activated I had no use of the cell phone at my disposal so I was shit out of luck if I needed to reach someone. Figures. The package was sent over night on Thursday to be at the UPS store tomorrow at noon. Being that I had registration for school, and we only had one car at our disposal which was being used by Ryan and Chad, I was stuck at home, having already completed registration, waiting for them to get home so I could go to the UPS Store and then to K-Mart to get food stuffs.
Chad and Ryan finally got home and so I dragged Chad back out to go to the stores with me. Leaving the K-Mart store and driving home I got into an accident. I had been turning left (with a turn arrow which was green) onto the main road out of the K-Mart Plaza and some elderly gentleman across the way, turning to his right (read: my left, hence turning in the same direction), hit me as he turned right but brought his Pick up truck into the left lane where I just happened to be. Oi. The side of my car is a mess, thankfully no one was hurt, though that could have gone way differently if he had succeeded in pushing me over the median and into oncoming traffic, which almost happened.
So, we turn off the road and pull into an empty parking lot. Now, by this time I was a mess. Crying, shaking, the works. Chad, thankfully, was doing much better than I was and so he got out of the car to talk to the guy, for sake of ease his name is Richard. Richard and Chad went off to call the cops and get them over to assess the situation. As for me, well, I was still a mess and hadn't even unbuckled my seat belt, never mind got out my registration and insurance information. Chad and Richard got back and I managed to calm down a bit once the cop showed up. I even managed to get out my information without too much information.
The cop decided to ask Richard what had happened first and, according to him, he had a green arrow to turn. Now, I don't know how many of you have noticed this, but the chances of both of us having a turn arrow at the same time, as well as the chances of him having a RIGHT turn arrow, are impossible. Intersections are just not made that way because if they were things like what happened to me would happen a lot more often than they already do. The cop obviously wasn't all that believing of his version of the story and so he came over to me where I told him what happened. He took both of our information (I'm still trying to stop shaking and crying at this point but I was able to give him an intelligible story) and went off into his cop car to do whatever it is they do in there.
About twenty tense minutes later he comes back out, an entire accident report filled out. He goes to Richard first and explains to him why he was at fault in the situation, not me, and told him that he would probably need to go to a driving school. I believe he was also issued a ticket, though I'm not positive. With that being done he sent Richard on his way and turned to talk to me. He handed me a paper that was the entire accident report filled out with all the information for both of our vehicles as well as clearly stating that it was, indeed, Richard's fault. Great. Fantastic. The cop was wonderful and he sent us on our way. Chad drove home because I was still shaking badly.
Thankfully we weren't even three minutes from our apartment. However, as we turned onto our road, a particularly ear-piercing metallic grinding noise came from the front right wheel area. Not a pleasant sound. Once home, and once I composed myself enough to be intelligible over the phone, I called my parents and left a message on the house phone. (While waiting for the cop to show up I had torn open my package to remove my new phone which had, not even, one bar of power and managed to text message my mother to let her know what happened.) Not too long after my mother called me from the restaurant that she and my father were eating at to make sure Chad and I were alright, which we are, and talked about a course of action, deciding that my father would call me when he got home and he'd help me get this mess straightened out.
So, my father took care of contacting Richard's insurance company last night and got that partially taken care of. I went to bed feeling slightly sore, physically, but none the worst for wear.
***Fast-forward to this morning***
The house phone starts to ring around 9 this morning, waking me up from a rather sound sleep. Being disgruntled that I was woken up against my will, I proceeded to ignore the phone call, trying to force myself to fall back asleep. However, sleep was not to be. A few moments later my cell phone started ringing, leaving me no choice but to answer it. Groggily, I sat up and answered my phone, trying to keep the irritation of having been woken up out of my voice. It was State Farm, Richard's insurance company, giving me the information and names of the people I needed to contact who could fix my car and get me a renal car.
Copying down these names I made my choice on which companies to go with (Orlando Collision Auto Body for the repairs to my car and Enterprise for my rental car) and proceeded to try and contact them. Well, I call the auto body a couple of times with no luck. There was no answer and, unless I was certain they were closed or not answering their phone, I wasn't going to leave a message and thus went forward to call Enterprise. Enterprise told me, that since I am under 25, I needed to have my insurance company and State Farm contact them and send over proof that a) I am insured with insurance carrying over to rental cars and b) my rental car is, indeed, being paid for by State Farm. Well, part "b" was completed with no problem, once I got off the phone with Enterprise and called back State Farm. Part "a" however is still being carried out.
Enterprise could not get in touch with my insurance company and, so, I then decided "Hey, my father will probably have a better chance of getting in touch with them then I will. I'll call him and ask." Well, I call his house phone and get the answering machine. Ok, I figure he may not have heard the phone, may have been in in the bathroom or whatnot so I don't leave a message and figure I'll call back in a few minutes. I do that and, yet again, I get the answering machine. I then call his cell phone. It's off. I'm shunted straight to voice mail. Great. Just peachy. He buys himself a new cell phone that works and it's off. Someone, please, give me the logic in that! Sigh. So, I call my mom. Straight to voice mail as well, which is odd because she, like me, never turns her phone off. I leave a voice mail with her, hoping one of them will get back to be shortly.
My phone rings, I flip it open, it's mom. She was in the bowels of Little Compton and had no service, thus her phone didn't ring on her end. Ok. Not a big deal. I told her what was going on and she said she'd try to reach dad and let him know was was going on. No luck. She calls me back and asks me to get the number of someone my parents know who helps handle our car issues, no matter what they are. I get the number for her, she calls, no answer. Se leaves a message and calls me back to let me know this. So, there we are, 1500 miles away and neither of us are able to get in touch with anyone who can help us. Lovely. So, we have no other choice but to wait for someone to call us back.
Dad signs online not long after this and tells me he was out mowing the lawn. Now, I'm glad that he got out of the house to do this but also a little frustrated because he knew that I was trying to get all this done and would probably need his help. I ask him to call my mom who asks him to look for our car insurance information and then fax it over to Enterprise so I can get a rental car.
By the time I got in touch with my father it was a little after 11 and Enterprise closes at noon. I don't think I'm going to get a rental car today or tomorrow, since Enterprise is closed tomorrow, and I have class Monday at 1:15. Well, it's now 11:39 and the final touches are just being carried out. My dad found the insurance information and is going to fax it over to Enterprise. My mom is going to call my dad and make sure he knows they close at noon. I'm going to crash for the rest of the day and try not to go crazy. Maybe I'll make Chad make me food, since I haven't gotten a chance to eat yet today. Nearly three hours after I was so rudely, but necessarily, woken up. Hopefully I won't have to make any more phone calls today or talk with anyone I don't know, since I hate doing both, but everyone I talked to was helpful and explained things to me very clearly.
I never want to go through this again.