Glad to be Insured

Anyone who owns a vehicle or a home knows the comfort, even when inconvenient, insurance provides. Most of us live where insurance on automobiles is a requirement for licensure. I live in one such state.

BYOB ice water.

While I disagree with the current application of required insurance, I am not opposed to the requirement all drivers have insurance. My insurance company and I have had anniversaries marriages long for. My credit union and I are on the road to divorce.

In a nauseous turn of events, an agent at the credit union whose first name is Ms. (pet peeve #936) sent me the equivalent of a dun letter. In this snotty piece of hatemail, Ms. informed me she would have no alternative but place an exorbitant policy on my truck to protect their interest in the same as it was obvious I would not be obtaining insurance as her previous correspondence had requested.

Are you hearing the
Friday Follies train?

Right turn, Clyde.

(Aside: This was the original topic Clyde had in mind for the SEP [which aired on Tuesday], but has been modified, amplified and otherwise improved in terms of indignant outrage and throwing of objects and obscenities for your viewing pleasure.)

Despite this being the second such complaint I have made, I was (hold on to your hat) polite in my issuance of a corporate character assassination on Ms. In fact, my complaint righteously requested an investigation into what could possibly be making Ms. assume I was uninsured.

Ms. had someone else in the insurance department to email me.

I am responding to the e-mail you sent to BANK, concerning the letters, you have received about your insurance. I do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We have received cancellations on your auto insurance(1). The last cancellation on your auto was dated 7-31-12(2).  I would be glad to mail you a copy(3).   We are unable to use ID cards as proof of insurance, because they do not show your coverage amounts or BANK listed on the policy.   For some reason your company is not sending us a renewal statement(4) after they send us a cancel(5). I was able to go on INSURER’s website(6) and pull a copy of your policy(7). I sent it to our tracking center today. This should take care of the problem.  If you receive another letter, just(8) call your company and have them fax us a renewal of your policy.

Again I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you(9). Please feel free to call me about any concerns or questions you may have.

I did not even cover my mouth when I coughed [expletive].

Rather than explain the numbered things wrong with this “response” in advance, I offer my typical M3 Friday Follies hatemail response (sent to the responder, the loan department and the president of my branch) to BANK’s rebuttal. It covers numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 9.

~~~~~

[BANK agent],

I originally believed BANK had my policy confused with another shareholder. After your email, I am no longer convinced this is merely an honest mistake. 

My INSURER account is on an automatic payment. My policy has not been cancelled at any time since I bought this truck. It was in force before I signed the loan documents for this vehicle and BANK was listed as lien holder from the issuance of the policy.

  1. There is no way BANK received a policy cancellation on my account in July because INSURER has never issued a cancellation on this policy. The auto payment was made just as it is every month. In July, renewal papers became available for my approval. THIS IS NOT A CANCELLATION.
  2. My policies (all of them, not just the one on the BANK collateral) are set to automatically renew because they do not change. INSURER sends an informational copy to me electronically and an old fashioned paper copy to BANK. AGAIN, THIS IS NOT A CANCELLATION.
  3. What BANK received was a INSURER policy change. They changed their policies to no longer pay the lien holder and insured separately. THIS IS NOT A CANCELLATION.
  4. In the packet was what the insurance industry refers to as a “dec sheet”. It is a declarations page. It clearly shows the coverage necessary and BANK as the lien holder. THIS IS NOT A CANCELLATION.
  5. I am attaching precisely what INSURER sent to BANK in July. IT IS NOT A CANCELLATION.

Regardless of your claim to the contrary, BANK did not receive a cancellation on my auto policy. In fact, the proof of insurance the BANK letter demanded was in the paperwork BANK claims was a cancellation.

I am thoroughly exhausted by the effort necessary to prove I have insurance every time the shareholder with whom my account is crossed gets a cancellation notice. While BANK pays its agents to contact insurance companies, I receive no benefit from my time-consuming, futile, repetitious attempts to correct accounting errors beyond my control in the direct purview of the BANK insurance department.

The Insured Beast in Question

Sending me a cancellation of someone else’s policy would be a violation of that shareholder’s rights. In no way will I be shamed in submission by a hollow threat of sending me paperwork. I have no doubt about the integrity of my auto insurance coverage. Neither am I ignorant of the issuance and maintenance of insurance policies.

For the record, had INSURER issued a cancellation notice, by law it would have to issue said notice to me as the insured, not merely to you, the lien holder. I have not received any such notification because my policy has never been cancelled in the eight years I have had this particular policy. If BANK keeps records, you would be able to note this policy also covered the previous vehicle I financed with BANK.

Further, this has never been a problem before this loan. With my previous auto loan, which was on the same policy, renewals arrived in due course without this incessant need to have INSURER fax something to BANK in the interim and conclusion of every renewal cycle, despite their having supplied it properly in the first place. This is not the first time I have made this precise complaint.

Alternatively, in the event you or BANK’s agent (Ms. XXX) actually read the paperwork you have threatened to send me, rather than what appears to be just looking at the account number and assuming the only thing ever received is a cancellation notice, this could have been avoided and saved all of the shareholders money.

I have been a INSURER customer for over 14 years and had no problem obtaining precisely what I needed. I am the kind of customer they appreciate because I do not cancel, miss payments or make claims. Their agent was apologetic for BANK’s misinterpretation of their documents. Your email appendage claiming you were sorry for the inconvenience of me having to duplicate unnecessary effort did not ring as sincere, as the body of your message was clear in its intimation I should have nothing better to do than “just call [my] company”.

If BANK’s corporate stance is the shareholder is always wrong and a delinquent while their agents are infallible, it is time for me to be shopping for alternative banking options.

I will be actively seeking an authority higher than yours for this complaint.

Utterly dissatisfied,
Red Dwyer

~~~~~

(2) Although it has been covered to a large degree, does anyone in the M3 Readers notice what month it is wherein they are demanding my immediate compliance?

(4) It is of note, in the last four cycles of the policy, I have received no notifications because the renewal documents arrived in an 6 x 9″ envelope which has RENEWAL DOCUMENTS written in 36 point font on the outside of the envelope (in direct contrast to the #10 envelope which screams CANCELLATION NOTICE they claim to have at the ready to send to me to prove I am a delinquent).

(6) Were BANK not listed as lien holder, they would have had no access to INSURER’s website.

(7) If the policy were cancelled, INSURER would not provide a copy of the former policy nor admit I was a client.

Pardon all the webscream, but the bank and insurer are all referred to by acronyms. Oh, and I was webscreaming about the cancellation, which was delivered in a prettier shade of red. Well, and (4) really is delivered in far larger webscream than I am accustomed to using.

Red

I see it.

Managerial Edition

Bank agent did not bother to do anything except look in her handy dandy computer (which takes itself offline no less than once per day during customary business hours) to see if Ms. wrote an entry supporting her correspondence. How many ways are managers getting this wrong?

If your employee has a computer generated letter sent, the software is not in on the conspiracy theory. Your employee had to have put in some sort of data, correct or otherwise, directing the computer to generate such letters.

Let’s face it.

Computers are as lazy and ignorant as their users. Even if it can take itself offline to perform whatever digital masturbation is needed, the computer did not randomly select my account for harassment.

So, Bank agent, you are a grade-A, bona fide languid sloth. It was far easier to see if an erroneous record was entered than to see if the record which was inferred by the complaint was indeed valid. Furthermore, your oblivious system illiteracy is a testament to what plagues society on the whole. In your self-righteous belief being present at the job site fulfills your obligation to receive compensation, you offend every single person who has ever held as much as one minim of corporate integrity or personal responsibility.

Tosses soap box in the Beast and puts hoof on accelerator.

Still seeing,

Red Signature

~~~~~~~~~~


Have we as a society become so dependent and trustworthy as to assume our colleagues never make errors in data entry? Why do we get error messages and assume it is a normal course of events, but assume what we see in print (virtual or on paper) must be correct? Are we raising a generation who will be unable to get out of their chairs?

© Red Dwyer 2012
Re-Blogging of this or any other post on The M3 Blog
is expressly forbidden.
Copyright and Privacy Policy available in The Office. 
Previous Post
Leave a comment

21 Comments

  1. My auto insurance sends cancellation notices every month unless you call in the payment because of the way the dates are set up. My last company, they were ignorant, they sent my mother a cancellation notice for a policy I owned, after never sending me the changes to the policy and new billing. They never sent me the notice and my dear mother in all her self proclaimed intellectual superiority never bothered to tell me she got the notice of cancellation so of course it lapsed big time. Apparently located the people you know whose cancellations you get is too much trouble to avoid causing them serious trouble.
    Laurie recently posted..Changes in Hope of SimplicityMy Profile

    Reply
    • I am so utterly and thoroughly tired of having crap heaped on my plate because of someone else’s ineptitude. I feel another Go Daddy post coming on…

      Is there some chance your cancellations are going to Ms?

      Reply
      • I’m beginning to think people should be required to undergo intelligence and common sense testing to breed. Then maybe the incompetent idiots in this would be reduced. I think it’s a conspiracy to cause stress, and get more people to give into the urge to knock the crap out of someone.
        Laurie recently posted..Changes in Hope of SimplicityMy Profile

        Reply
        • I have long supported the idea of forced sterilization until appropriate schooling. Again, we have to have a license to wreck a car, but not to wreck a life. Heil.

          Reply
  2. I have a similar issue. A debt I had was released from me in 1996. Now I am being followed by a creditor for the same debt. The paperwork was sent to them signed by all responsible parties. I have been back and forth with this by phone and on paper for six months now, it is not a legitimate debt. But I am the one who has to reprove that because the original debt which was released, was sent by inept person to a creditor, and the creditor has fired not one, but two of the people managing my case. The saga continues.
    Gail Thornton recently posted..Poem – Anaphoric RideMy Profile

    Reply
    • Oh the broken world of credit. They suck just as badly. It is a similar issue because the idiotic (infallible) ppl who work in banks are as much to blame for the credit tripe as are the idjits who work for the creditors. Ugh.

      Reply
  3. I had to divorce my insurance company and my bank when I married my wife. She liked hers better

    Reply
    • I think that is a pretty common prenuptial requirement which is nestled in the fine print. 😉

      Reply
  4. Miami is rife with such problems as these. This is because we are now 52% foreign born and it seems there is little sense of work ethic or sense of responsibility in many people of these third world cultures. No sense of craftsmanship and their “move the papers here at 9AM and then move them there at 5 PM” attitudes have severe consequences for people trying to manage their affairs in the face of the type of bureaucratic nightmare you have described. An English only speaking person here has very limited employment opportunity which is like being a stranger in your own country. (I am not xenophobic as I am second generation immigrant myself but the reality is certifiable).As far as mandatory insurance is concerned I am astonished that people claim it is a violation of their freedom to have to buy health insurance imposed. They claim it is socialist dictatorship.Well when you go to the county hospital with that heart attack and get a triple by-pass who do you expect to pay that $250,000 bill that your are not going to pay? I consider what such people consider liberty as a sense of entitlement for a free ride. In many cities this burden of social services unfunded cannot be sustained.

    Reply
    • What you describe is the employer’s fault. If your employee does not complete the work done or the manager has no idea how to manage the employees, they need to be fired in favor of someone who will do the job properly. I rarely have to fire ppl I hire, but when I had an HR department doing it, I fired them for their choices in employees I needed to fire.

      Reply
      • Yes that is sensible policy. Our problem is that there are not many alternatives in the work force from which to choose. The dropout rate here is high and too few trainable young people exist. The college bound certainly will be but too few return to this area to establish careers. Our education system claims a 50% graduation rate but if you start off with 1,000 freshmen and 250 of the 250 seniors graduate that is a 25% graduation rate. One reason for dropout rate is that students are expected to have mastered algebra 1 leaving 8th grade. Then the advanced math courses start in senior high and too many kids can’t do it. I have a BA and 2 MA degrees and I can’t do algebra 1. I have long campaigned to make book keeping and accounting math credits to no avail in local, state and national efforts of mine.

        Reply
        • If you propose to blame the drop out rate on the system requirements which are widely accepted at the national level, your problem is not with the students or the high schools. It is truly with the elementary and middle schools. I took algebra I in the seventh grade and algebra II in the eighth grade. If the foundation is not there, the students should not pass. This is another cry to get away from standardized testing, as it requires no understanding, but rote responses.

          Frankly, algebra basics are being taught in the fourth grade. Parents need to stop teaching their children algebra is a communicable disease. If you know how to balance your checkbook, you have the basics for algebra.

          Reply
  5. Sounds like an awful mess.
    Angela Young recently posted..Who polled God?My Profile

    Reply
  6. Insurance companies always give me a warm fuzzy feeling. They are always striving to provide better service at highly competitive rates and will bend over backwards to help you, and to make sure that you get the best possible value for your dollar. If all companies operated like insurance companies did, the world would be a much better place indeed.
    Binky recently posted..Identity TheftMy Profile

    Reply
  7. Car insurance companies and their personnel are a problem here in the UK too though the idiots that they all employ are a global farce, being that they are all of the same mould, incredibly thick skinned, undoubtedly useless and always annoying the hell out of everyone that uses them. A few years ago I had an issue with an insurer. Okay I will cut a long story short, I contacted my then insurer to let them know that I would be paying by cheque at the next renewal instead of the direct debit that I had previously used, of course both of these options were available at the start of my policy and I always pay for the whole year in one payment, which simplifies everything, well in theory it does anyway. So what was the problem?

    Well I had another five weeks to run on my policy but what I didn’t know at the time is that they cancelled my insurance without letting me know. Rather scary or what? especially when I had paid up front so after all the usual hassles of dealing with numbskulls on the other end of the telephone (when one can get through, and after listening to the gruelling choice of musical entertainment, better known as crap that they lavish upon customers during those never-ending holding queues) I eventually told them what I thought of their exceptionally stupid action and that it was against the law to cancel my insurance without notifying me first, I dread to think of what would have happened should there have been an accident. Anyway after all that crap and of course getting refunded I moved onto the next insurance company, and I will be moving again at the renewal, I guess all of those companies employ idiots so shop around.

    Maybe the whole
    world is going MAD? 🙁 lol

    Andro xxx

    Reply
    • I believe you are correct. Mad as hatters one and all. I cannot imagine the inconvenience of swapping companies with each term. Ugh. My prior insurer stayed from my first license until the agent retired and stopped selling policies. It is when I moved to my current company. I simply cannot wrap my brain around it. Then again, very few industries are geared toward customer or corporate loyalty. Hardly anyone retires any longer or stays with one company for a lifetime. Shamefully, the companies sell each other back and forth and mix and mingle our information until nothing is sacred for they have all shared our secrets as assets. Ugh.

      That really sounds like a conspiracy theory. Where’s my tinfoil hat? 😉

      Reply
      • Yes I have a hat like that too 😉 I don’t enjoy changing every year but it is a silly merry go round here in the UK where companies offer new customers a better deal than their existing one’s even when no claims have been made, now that really annoys me and so I guess I am part of the never-ending problem where every year the collective WE shop around online trying to get a good deal, of course like all the others they are keen to adopt a new customer, and shaft their good paying regulars where the sun doesn’t shine 🙁 It is ALL crazy but we have to shop around in order to gain the upper hand, of course I would much prefer to stay with my existing insurer and get a good deal but unfortunately that never happens these days 🙁

        Have a lovely evening Red 🙂 😉
        BTW I really like your truck and
        that picture of you standing by
        the tailgate is really nice also 🙂

        Andro xxx

        Reply
        • I happen to have found a good one. My rates go down. I have every discount they own. Accident forgiveness, no deductible. Part of the “new customer” thing is they know the long term goodies can cost them a pretty penny. The thought of shopping for quotes gives me hives.

          And thank you. I rather love my truck 😉

          Reply
  1. Saturday Evening Post | The M3 Blog

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.