The trials of paperwork...

On the day of the US election, November 4th, 2008, I was driving to northern Alberta for work. Mrs. Spit came home after her normal day at work to find that all was not, how might you say, "normal" at our domicile.

Fast forward two months and a bit, and you have the phone call we had from our insurance adjuster on the home phone when we arrived home of Friday night. "Hi, this is N from Questionably Quick Insurance calling for Mr. Spit. Please call me so that I can finalize the paperwork needed for your claim." (or something along those lines).

I called the agent, from work, last Wednesday, asking her to phone me back, on my direct line at work (where I was 8-5 for most of the week). I phoned on Thursday, same message. I phoned on Friday, leaving the same voicemail. I had also emailed this woman twice last week, asking for an update. On Friday I phoned the toll-free number, got another adjuster, who told me that he couldn't help me much - the data was stored on the agent's local hard drive. Apparently the insurance industry doesn't believe that hard drive failures will happen to them. Haven't learned of the magic of mirrored striped RAID drives... but who am I to suggest IT policy to the people who hold the insurance policy on my house?

So I find out second hand that my claim had been reviewed, and that it appears that the agent is ready to settle. Huzzah huzzah huzzah - and all that jazz...

After several attempts to contact N during the week, imagine my surprise when there was a message on the home phone, as mentioned off the start.

Today I phoned N, and remarkably (after the lack of success last week) I got her on the first dial. We connected, she emailed me the form that both Mrs. Spit and I had to sign, and she even replied in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. right away) to other emailed questions and clarifications.

Good news - we will get an initial cheque as soon as she gets the fax from us, signed, witnessed etc. Bad news - the check will be a lot smaller than we hoped for. It turns out that, unlike what our jeweler told us is typical for a home insurance policy limit - $10,000, our policy was only good for $3,000 for jewelry. Option 2 I'm told. So when the sum total of the replacement cost for our stolen jewelry is about $8,000 - that's a lot of sparkly stuff that's not getting replaced. Even if I get the 'friend' discount from my jeweler.

There is a silver lining to this rather odoriferous formation of cloud. Since we have lost so much money on the jewelry (ack!) we will not be required to pay our deductible for the electronics that were purloined. They will consider that 'paid' by the excessive value of shiny bits that some half-wit absconded with on the 4th. Thus we will be able to walk in, pick up bits, and walk out without further monetary exchanges taking place.

I'm still feeling ill-intent towards the half-wit that absconded with my stuff. The half-wit left me playing on the Wii instead of the PS3 (Playstation 3) over my Christmas holidays. The half-wit that, more painfully, has stolen all of my saved game data from the few games that I had acquired for my PS3. Many hours of whacking the white ball in Tiger Woods. Even worse was the much more difficult leveling-up required in Gran Turismo... that one REALLY hurts to consider re-doing. But I digress...

We will be attending the Church of Best Buy once they get synced with the wonderful agent from QQ Insurance. We will be able to replace the gaming system and, more importantly, the camera. I can always game on the Wii or the laptop. Taking photos without a camera? Much more difficult.

So, here I sit on tenterhooks, waiting for the chance to hook up a shiny new game console to my HD capable TV, so I can make my best impression of Tiger Woods and start beating the snot out of an imaginary golf ball. Truly, the trials of paperwork have left me wanting to really take some extra stuffing out of the imaginary white ball!!!

At least we have the insurance... it could always be worse.