Postcards From Across the Pond

You may recall that I ended 2022 by wrecking our car. If not, here’s a reminder:

The question for today, however, is this: when is a car both a perfectly serviceable vehicle, and yet—at the same time—destine for the scrap heap? The answer, of course, is when Mr. Schrödinger—in the guise of an automobile insurance company—gets hold of it.

On the day of the incident, as my car sat atop the bollard, I called my insurance company to inform them. They told me they had nothing to do with it; they were just a broker and we needed to call the AA. We did. They sent a tow truck, who had nothing to do with the car, either. He was just a contractor who would take the car to another, local contractor, who would hold it until they could find a contractor closer to us.

This all happened in relatively short order. Apollo—a garage not far from us—received the car a few days later. Their guy had a look at it, and sent a report to the insurance company, who would make the decision as to whether it would be fixed or sent to the parking garage in the sky. And so, this left us with: The AA (for you in the US, that’s the Automobile Association, not Alcoholics Anonymous), Zenith (an underwriter), Vizion (another underwriter), and Apollo. And that’s where things have sat for the last three weeks.

The AA, like a good Pontius Pilate, washed its hands of the whole thing. Nothing to do with them; we need to call Zenith. So, my wife spent the better part of an afternoon trying to contact Zenith, and finally got through to them, only to be told it had nothing to do with them, and we needed to contact Apollo. And so, the next business day (as that one had already morphed into twilight) I called Apollo, who told me they were in the same position we were: they had the car, but they couldn’t do anything with it until they heard from Vizion, which is where the trail went cold. Zenith was difficult to contact, but Vizion proved impossible.

The phone rang for fifteen minutes straight, then cut off. For the next half hour, I tried to call back, but every time I did, the phone refused to connect. Finally, I got a connection and, after several attempts to get through their seven levels of service options hell, I spent one hour, three minutes and 55 seconds on hold before I gave up. (How do people with jobs ever connect to Customer Service?)

And this is how we became the owners of a perfectly viable, though absent, vehicle, as well as a couple soon on their way to buy a new car.

Either way, we are currently walking everywhere we go, due to yet another Catch-22: our insurance covers a rental car, but the AA won’t approve it until the car is being fixed, while Zenith will, allegedly, stump for the rental car, but only after a decision to junk it is made.

You might think something like this would get me down, but after spending all that time listening to an artificially empathetic robot voice telling me that I am important to them and that they appreciate my patience, my self-esteem is in tip-top shape.

Additionally, our lifestyle means that all this amounts to little more than a frustrating, but minor, inconvenience. If we were normal (spoiler alert: we’re not), we’d be climbing the walls about now, but the fact is, we rarely use the car. Aside from the occasional (mostly optional) trip, we only use the car twice a week, and both times that’s only because we have to carry stuff. So, for the last three weeks, we’ve been walking the 1.08 miles to Waitrose to do our weekly shop (this is something we did when we lived in the town centre, so it’s not really a hardship, other than the 20 minute walk, as opposed to the 10 minute walk we used to have), and the .95 miles to choir practice (which involves a stroll into town while carrying a piano keyboard under my arm).

So, in general, the only difference is, we’re getting more exercise. And if we genuinely need a car, we have one at our disposal, which is down to another stroke of good fortune: my Co-Wheels membership.

I discovered Co-Wheels when I was caring for my MIL, and my wife was still working. I needed a car, but not often enough to justify buying a new one. Somehow, I heard about Co-Wheels, signed up, and found it to be extremely convenient. When this latest car-crisis came about, I revived my membership, so now we have the use of a car if we really need one.

The only wrinkle in all this is that another cold spell—deeper and longer than the December cold snap—has arrived, which makes our jaunts a bit nippy.

But it’s still better than paying hundreds of pounds for a rental that we’d only use twice a week.

And, at some point, hopefully before Easter, we’ll hear about Schrödinger’s Car.