Month: March 2014

As mentioned here previously, we recently bought a new (new to us anyway) car. Shortly after publishing that post, I was contacted by one of the PR reps[ref]Hi Stephanie![/ref] at Edmunds.com. It seems they ran across my post, found it interesting and offered to send me some freebies[ref]I promise this will become relevant to this post later.[/ref]

Then we took the Tucson back to the dealership so they could install the value guard package[ref]Basically, it’s a fancy plastic wrapper that replaces the old leather car bras and is designed to prevent rocks and what not from chipping the paint.[/ref] we let ourselves be talked into. It took them 4 days to get it all setup and while they were working on our Tucson, they lent us an Elantra. I’m sure that’s a nice car… for somebody smaller. My wife complained that she barely fit in it; as I’m taller than she is, I never tried the car out.

When we finally got our Tucson back, my wife noticed a big scratch on the tail gate. She called the dealership back to complain and then called me at work. When I got home, I examined the car and then called the dealership. I explained my frustrations. The service manager I spoke to was very polite but explained there wasn’t a lot he could do other than to fix the damage. He did say he’d talk to their general manager to see what else could be done.

At our next opportunity, we drove the Tucson down to the dealership to drop it off to have the tail gate fixed. This time they gave us another, slightly newer Tucson off their lot as a the loaner. It was nice and had some features ours didn’t but was also missing some things that ours had. Our Tucson had a better electronics package, including a backup camera. The loaner had heated seats, side-mirror turn signals and those window guard things that let you leave your window cracked without worrying about it raining. On the whole, we greatly preferred our Tucson to their loaner, though I’ll admit to wishing we had the heated seats.

That’s all the older car drama, now onto today’s nightmare.

I was sleeping pretty heavily, though I’m pretty sure I’d gotten up enough to hit the snooze button one time. Then my phone started ringing, as I’m blind without my glasses; I fumbled with it for a minute. I figured out it was my wife calling just in time for her to disconnect. I called her back immediately and found out she’d been in a car accident. I threw on some clothes and rushed down to the hospital. Only the quickest route to the hospital took me right past the accident site and I saw the front end of our Tucson looked destroyed. I spoke to one of the police officers on the scene and was told they’d just loaded my wife into the ambulance and were taking her over to the hospital.

I spent the next three hours or so sitting around the ER waiting for the doctors to finish taking the X-rays and completing their exams. Fortunately, everything checked out fine; they just warned us Michelle would likely be very sore the next couple of days. Also at one point, one of the police officers came by to give us a copy of the accident report and to tell us where they’d had our Tucson towed.

After I took Michelle home, I then had the joy of seeing how the insurance side of the automobile industry works. I spent most of the rest of the day on the phone, calling our insurance, the towing company, repair shops, etc… *sigh*

Oh and those freebies that Edmunds.com said they were sending; they came in today’s mail. *double sigh* It’s been one hell of day.