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As I was daydreaming on my long but easy commute home, I recalled an experience I had with my previous insurance company involving my 1997 Honda Valkyrie.  This was probably back in 1999 or 2000 when I was living in Michigan doing the ‘Royal Oak Bike Night’ thing.  To this day, I simply cannot convey the degree of douche bag of someone I was forced to meet.  Let me explain…

Said douche bag was leaving as the night was winding down on his CBR 929RR.  See, the way Royal Oak bike night works is that bikes line the parallel parking spots by backing the rear wheel in perpindicular to the curb…and my Vakyrie was the last bike before the cars started.  Anyway, said douche bag decided to do a burnout upon his exodus…you know to impress the chicks. 

Well, across the street at the traffic light were a couple of cops in their car.  He noticed after the smoke started rolling and chopped the throttle.  This was OK, but when he dumped the clutch at the same time, Darwin took over.  HE HIGH-SIDED AT ZERO MPH!  That was funny and well-deserved.  His bike, however, slammed into mine knocking the poor SOB on its side. 

My laugh went to shock then then rage when Mr. Adrenaline took over.  My skinny 155 pound (ahem - I’m much bulkier now ) body picked up that 750 pound machine unassisted without any problem - so much so that it almost went over the other way.  By that time, thankfully, the cops were on the scene and a brawl was prevented. 

It turns out that I would have kicked this guy’s ass and I should have.  I’m not a fighter, but since Mr. DB broke his collar bone from his stunt, the odds were with me.  The cops were actually pretty cool because they allowed a helluva lot of verbal abuse via my mouth as he was being packaged in the ambulance (in front of everyone)…and I’m pretty creative when I’m pissed off.

Back to the title of the story…

There was a lot of damage.  The local dealership gave me an estimate of $4500 and I started to go to work on the recovery of said funds.

NOTE:  I will admit that the amount was rather high.  The dealer guy did his job, identifying everything that was damaged, but the prices were robbery - $1400 for a new tank - for example.  People who crash motorcycles get outrageous quotes; People who ride motorcycles pay outrageous insurance fees. 

His company was Allstate, and boy what a pain in the ass they were.  Between call avoidance, the run-around, and being put on hold until I simply hung up (several times of 1+ hours), I was getting nowhere.  This went on for a full week.  I got nowhere.

Then I called my agent.  What good would that do you ask?  It just so happened that I was also with Allstate.  My agent stated as if I was retarded, “Did you tell them you were with Allstate?”  Damn.  The man just beat me down.  It shouldn’t matter, it just shouldn’t matter like that since it was their guy who was at-fault.

I called Allstate one more time - the same lady mind you - and whoa did the tone change after I told her that I was contributing to her salary.  I suddenly got the golden treatment.  Within a week, I had a check for the full amount.  I also strongly recommended that they reconsider insuring Mr. DB by explaining, in detail, the incident.

The moral of the story here is that an insurance company’s job is to bring as much money in and minimize the money going out.  It’s a great business model and I try to do the same with my personal finances.  In the end, since I belonged, I was “in good hands”.

Two final points of interest:

• No ticket was issued - the cops figured my verbal assault + pain & suffering was punishment enough.  That sucked.
• The guy who wrote up the estimate at the dealer told me that he recognized the name of the other bike owner from the police report.  They just got done repairing his bike from another ‘moment’.  I was shocked.