Life Lessons

Okay, here's the story. I was heading down to Vancouver this past weekend to spend Easter with my parents, so I decided to take my car into the shop for an oil change and a look-over to make sure it was in good condition to cross the Coquihalla. It had been losing power and stalling out, which I had been told by a different mechanic (several years ago) was due to trouble with my catalytic converter, so I asked this new mechanic to look in to that issue.

I dropped my car off at the mechanic's at 8:45 Wednesday morning with instructions to call me to discuss any issues they came across. By 3pm, I hadn't heard from them, so I called and was told they'd run a diagnosis on my engine and flushed my catalytic converter. They discovered that it wasn't plugged, and would need another hour with my car to determine what was causing my power loss. After an hour and a half, I called them back and was told that they had had a car emergency with another customer and hadn't been able to check my car yet. They said I could leave my car with them over night, or drive it home and bring it back in the morning. I decided to leave it there, hoping they would get to it first thing the next day, since that was the day I was heading to Vancouver.

While walking to work late Thursday morning, I decided to stop in at the mechanics and see how things were going. When I got there, the mechanic told me they'd had an "incident" with my car. When they took it out for a test drive that morning, the hood wasn't fully shut, and my safety catch was broken, so it went flying up and severely cracked my windshield. The hood was also damaged and wouldn't close. The mechanic said this was a first for him, and he wasn't sure how to deal with the situation, so he'd call the local ICBC guy for instructions on how to proceed.

Later that day, the mechanic left a message for me to call, but since I was done work for the day, I just walked over to the shop for the news. He showed me how he had jimmied the hood shut so I could drive the car home. Then he said that ICBC told him if I made the claim, neither of us would be dinged on our insurance, so he asked me if I could do that. I told him I'd need to talk to my brother Kent first, since Kent is a litigation lawyer and deals with ICBC all the time.

I talked to Kent, and he told me not to make the claim. If I did, my premium would go up, and also since the accident happened with the mechanics, it would be fraudulent behavior. Good to know! I called ICBC Tuesday morning just to double check, and they told me the same thing. Then I called the mechanic and explained why he would have to make the claim.

So here I am a week later with a car that is in worse condition than when I took it into the shop. However, this has been a very educational experience. Hopefully it's an education that I'll never have to repeat!