Things my parents left for me to do - the car

On the afternoon before my parents left for China, mum hit another car with her car. She sort of made a claim, didn't add me to the official list of people who are authorised on her insurance policy and asked me to take care of it before she came back. This is how it began. On the day, she accidentally pocketed the other guy's driver's licence and forgot to record the details of his car. She had a mailing address for the guy so sent the guy a letter with my details. From then, we had contact with each other. Turns out his car was a company vehicle and other than giving me his details, he didn't have much to do anymore. His company took care of the rest - sent me/mum a letter of demand. At first, I was just feeding information to the car insurance because I wasn't officially authorised. They couldn't tell me any information about the policy but would accept my information; sort of like a bad one way conversation. After I collected all the bits and pieces like where the accident happened, confirmed my mum wasn't drinking, they sent me a letter to let me know what was next. At this time, I cracked it and made mum call the car insurance place to add me to the policy. I also made her call Vicroads to get a driving history sent home. That was one of the things the insurance company needed. This is Budget Direct btw. They were fairly helpful up to that point.

After that, things got frustrating and annoying. Letters came in the mail requesting various documents like quotes and money. At first they were nice letters. I sent some of the documents off. Then the letters got quite demanding. I called them to ask and they said all I needed to do was get a quote with pictures from any car repairer and I'm all good. So I took it to a place near by to get a quote for the damage. But I then had to take it to Port Melbourne to have it assessed. They didn't tell me about this. :S. At this stage I also started getting letters to say if I don't do stuff in 14 days, they're going to close the claim. 4 days before they were still saying do stuff at your leisure.

Anyway, I went yesterday to get the car assessed at a Budget Direct assessment place and apparently the headlight protectors weren't listed as an accessory so they're not covered. The assessor was very nice about it and I said fine, I don't want them anyway. Mum's just going to sell the car next year anyway, with or without protectors are fine. We can just remove them. The insurance company sent me a text after the assessment saying that I needed to call them. So I did and they said I could insure the protectors for an additional $25. I said no. But then this morning, the repairer near my home called to say everything had been approved, bring the car in on Monday. I thought this was strange so I called the car insurance place just to check I didn't say "Yes! Charge me $25". Jane, the lady who served me was particularly kurt and unhelpful and started talking about a previous claim with AAMI and that nothing had been approved. There was a hold in the claim because they found that my mum had made a claim with another vehicle in May that wasn't listed in there database. This was dad's car, insured under mum's name when someone had hit rear ended him. Why hadn't they called me to tell me this? They only told me because I called them! Apparently they were supposed to call me today but it was 4pm when I called them so if they were going to call me, it was very late. So far I've been pretty messed around with the whole system. I was confused by Jane that I had to call back again to speak to someone else to understand what was going on.

I really miss AAMI. This is why I am still with AAMI and I will always be with AAMI. I've convinced mum to go back with AAMI after the insurance with Budget Direct ends. So I called AAMI today but because I'm not listed as an authorised person with mum's AAMI policy, they can't tell me squat either. So I said, how about you mail "my parents" the car accident details. They said they can't but if mum was to email asking them to send the details out, they would. So I sent an email to my parents, giving them the details. Hopefully the letter will come through and I can update my mum's insurance details with Budget Direct, then they'll unfreeze the claim and I can get the car fixed!

And here I thought I was finally going to be getting it fixed on Monday. Sigh. The drama continues.