Status Update 9/5/2012
To all of the wonderful ladies and gentlemen who have been following my build thread. I am sincerely sorry for such a long absence/hiatus and I truly want to thank you for your patience. I honestly had no intention of being gone for so long.
The “give it a week and you should be back to 100%” that my doctor originally told me fell a little short of the actual time it took me to get back to 100%. It ended up taking five weeks before I was back to 100% working order. As you might imagine, that length of time wreaked havoc with my schedule and life in general.
When that five week delay was combined with double the normal class load for school, the backed up workload from having to take time off work, being a groomsmen in a very close friends wedding, and then having to pack up/move my girlfriends entire apartment into a storage facility in a short amount of time (because they increased her rent by $350 a month, which was a 45% increase) right after she deployed. I ended up putting both the Rover and sleep on the wish list of things I would like to do when I get some rest time.
Thankfully, I managed to get good grades in all of those classes, caught back up at work, had a fantastic time at both the bachelor party and the wedding, and succeeded in moving her whole apartment into that storage facility without breaking anything.
I also made Expedition Portal my homepage so that I could sneak in a few minutes of surfing the forums here and there to help ease the stress and vicariously live through all of you and your stories, write-ups, and pictures. I owe everyone a BIG thank you for posting so much interesting stuff and so many good ideas! I learned a great deal from all of you and picked up quite a few ideas for mods I will do in the future!
After the accident, the other insurance company did have my truck fixed, which went very smoothly. The settlement and rental car however, did not go as smoothly. The claim took many months to settle and in fact was not completely settled until last week. In regards to the rental truck…I did not learn until after the fact that the rental truck was covered under my insurance because I pay for full coverage. Why is this important to know you might be wondering?
Well, it is important for a couple of reasons. The first reason being the fact that I DID NOT have to purchase the rental insurance from the rental company at all because it is coverage by my regular insurance (as long as I pay for full coverage). The second reason this is important to know is because the other insurance company will not reimburse me for the rental insurance that I DID NOT have to purchase because it is covered by my insurance. If I did not have full coverage, they would have reimbursed me.
So if I can offer any advice to you, it would be to check your coverage BEFORE something happens, because in all of the confusion of reporting the accident, dealing with the insurance, and dealing with the body shop, I didn’t even think to ask about my insurance covering the rental car. Hindsight is 20/20 and exercising a little common sense before hand would have saved me $300. Lesson learned. I am now reviewing ALL of my various insurance contracts with a “fine tooth comb” (as the saying goes).
I wanted to pass on my learning experience so that hopefully it would benefit others in the future but also because I had a question to ask all of you out there… first, a little back story to help you understand where I am coming from when I ask the question.
A few months before my car accident, my brother was in an accident as well. He was in his 1992 RRC and someone backed into him in a parking lot. It bent the bumper, broke his taillight lens, and bent his drivers side rear quarter panel a little bit. There was no structural damage at all, just three pretty easily replaced or straightened pieces were damaged. HOWEVER, his insurance company was going to total his Rover just for that small bit of easily repairable damage. The real kicker though, is that they only wanted to give him $2500 for his very nice RRC, which he has over $10K in.
Very fortunately for him, after two months of fighting with his insurance company and only being able to produce receipts for about $6500 of the amount he has in his RRC, someone in our area posted another RRC on Craigslist for $6300, which was pretty much the twin of his RRC.
After producing receipts for $6500 spent on his RRC within the year and a half before the accident, the insurance company only increased their offer to $3000 and said “well we have to account for depreciation”, he finally told them that if they really wanted total his car for that little bit of damage they could buy him the RRC that was on Craigslist for $6300 (it was the same color, spec, and right around the same mileage).
After that, they readily agreed to fix his RRC. He did the labor himself and it only cost $500 in total. After having to go through all of that fighting with his insurance company and getting it fixed, he decided he didn’t want to have to fight with them again and wanted to sell his RRC all together.
Having just watched him go through all of that and having gone through my own bad experience with insurance companies, I am now VERY nervous about taking my RRC out on the road until it has proper coverage. In total, throughout the four years and various depths of restoration on my Rover, I now have over 1500 hours of work into my RRC and a fair bit more money into my Rover than my brother does into his.
Even now before I put on the many “add-ons” which are awaiting install, the value of my RRC is still disproportionate to the current market value. When I do get all those extra bits installed, the value difference will be even more disproportionate to the market value. This poses a very troubling issue for me.
Just to clarify, I don’t ever plan on selling my Rover (which is why I have such a RIDICULOUS amount of time and money into it) but the fact remains, that there are other very unfortunate ways, which are beyond my control that could take it from me.
For instance, if I had been on time with my self-imposed deadlines on the Rover, it would have been the Rover that I was driving when I was rear-ended while sitting at a red light minding my own business. Given my brothers experience with his insurance company and the small amount of damage they were willing to total his RRC for. My battle would have been much MUCH harder to come to a fair conclusion over. I sincerely doubt that there is another RRC with the same modifications and as sorted as mine…in my area, that would come up on Craigslist conveniently when I would be fighting with the insurance company.
Even though I have a four-inch thick folder full of receipts it does not cover the value of things I bought used like the sliders, lift kit, snorkel, winch, etc. More importantly though is the fact that all of the time I have invested into making sure that my RRC is sorted out, dependable, and had high quality modifications done to it, are not covered. The frustrating bit is, if I had paid someone else to do all of the things I have done and had a receipt for proof, it would then be covered. I am not looking for a “ BIG payday” if my Rover were totaled. What I am looking for is to have it be less harmful and not leave me worse off. I thought the whole point of paying for insurance was to replace what was lost not get harmed all over again.
I invested all of that time and money into my Rover so it would be perfectly suited for my tastes, comforts, and uses so that it would enable me to do even more of the things that I want to do in my life. So if it gets totaled, stolen, or something worse, I would like to at least be able to replace the vehicle I lost with another of equal or nearly equal value and functionality.
I know I am not the first person to face this issue, which is why I am asking everyone’s advice. I am looking for an “Agreed value” policy that will still allow me to drive my vehicle off road because that is the whole point of our vehicles. I know that insurance and “off-road” do not really go together because there are so many different issues that can arise. However, I believe that if I roll my vehicle (hopefully that never happens) due to my own stupidity while on a trail then the damages to my vehicle are on my shoulders, but if I am at a campsite, national forest, national park, fire road, or some other place and it gets stolen, broken into, or someone crashes into me. I would like to be able to still call the insurance company.
So here is my question….With so many “Expedition/Overlanding/Off-road vehicles” on this website, what do you ladies and gentlemen have for insurance to make sure that you don’t lose your vehicle? Also, does your insurance cover other countries? I live in the United States and plan to do some exploring in Canada, Alaska, as well as many other countries, and it would be nice to be covered while I am away from my home country.
Any Advice you could offer me would be genuinely be appreciated.
Thank you very much!
Have a good day!
Jon
P.S.
I will be posting quite a few pictures either today or tomorrow, I just need to finish doing the write ups for them. I am sorry for taking so long.
