Many of you might have seen my facebook post of a very important lesson learned this week.About a month or two ago, I hit a pole, backed into it after a wedding I coordinated in downtown Portland. It was a long day and the dang thing was camouflaged. Well it did not do much damage, could not even really tell. Just could not open the back door very well, cause the tire was pushed in. So I procrastinated getting it fixed cause I did not want to make a claim, after getting an estimate and with a total of about $1200 worth of damage, we decided to make a claim about 2 weeks ago. Made the appointment for the body shop and rental car for 4pm on Monday (last week).
Ben came home Monday at about 2pm. Looked at me with sad eyes and said "honey, I got in an accident with the Jeep" after asking about his well being we went to look at the damage on the front end this time. He had rear ended a lady and I won't go into his story or driving skills...
I said no big deal, we are going to the body shop anyways, they will just fix both. Separate claims were made and by the way, you pay a deductible for each claim, not per year as I had thought. So we were looking at about $1000. Bummer.
Well, it just gets worse because our body shop called us a day later and said the damage for the 1st claim was up to $2200 after exploring a little more and the 2nd was around $4800. Because the claims/damage was too be fixed at the same time, did not matter that they were separate claims, that an adjuster needed to come out and determine if the car was worth fixing or totalled. Worth fixing...YES, tippy is worth fixing, she is paid off, we had just gotten brand new brakes, roters (the week before mind you), tires and a lifetime of alignments! We have only one car, no payments and a baby coming in 4 weeks...we do not need the stress of buying a new car.
Thursday, 1pm Tippy was declared dead and totalled....WHAT!!!
It was the most unexpected thing and I cried for hours. Maybe I just needed a good cry, maybe I am just pregnant and hormonal, maybe I am pissed I waited so long to get the back fixed, maybe I am mad at Ben for ruining my car, maybe I just really loved that car and wanted to keep it for much, much longer, for free! I am not sure but, she is gone.
Two days later...I was okay and had let go (after calling the adjuster and our agent at least 5 times to try and save her in anyway possible). We test drove some cars Saturday and our leaning towards a Subaru Tribeca, but we will see.
For now, I can only remember the good times in that car. The representation of my single years, trips to Seattle, many moves, fun times having Ben start driving her and me freaking out that we were going to tip over, a trip to California, the coast, Canada...So goodbye for now my devoted jeep, I loved and will always remember you.
