These things better not come in threes!

OK, having ranted about my poor AWOL lappy (the insurance process for which is only just beginning after the uni insurance dude came back from 6 weeks in Spain learning flamenco guitar (i kid you not)), it is time to do a little rant about the next piece of evil luck to befall me last Friday.

I was scooting to catch up with a mate who was visiting from Noo Zulland on Friday night just after 5pm. Dumb time to be scooting and, I will conceed, dumb of me to take the busiest (but most direct) route at death-to-scooters-o'clock.

I was at the entrance to the Elizabeth Street roundabout of death, waiting to merge, go round and carry on to whence I was headed. Unfortunately the sleep-deprived doctor coming off his shift at the hospital behind me decided that I was going when in fact I was doing nothing of the sort (as much as I would have liked to mow down the cyclist coming towards me on the roundabout I just wasn't in a sufficiently vindictive mood).

So, in his nice shiny Holden, he floored it, as you would when entering a busy roundabout - into my poor little scoots rear end.

Me, being on the scoot, got shunted towards the oncoming roundabout traffic and, in one of those marvellous survival instincts that we occasionally manage, jumped off and dropped the scoot, in order to not become the mowen down.

I turned around, ripped off my helmet and swore at this poor bastard (standing there looking mortified) in a manner that would have left Captain Haddock blushing. He kept apologising and asking if i was ok, at which point it occured to me that yes, my leg did hurt, but closer inspection only revealed what would become the mother of all bruises as opposed to something more to swear about.

I suggested that we get our respective vehicles off the road and calmed down a bit in the process (adrenalin produces most unladylike behaviour!), did the insurance thingo with him and took my rather sorry looking scoot home again.

Then the insurance game began.....

Was very impressed with the lady at the call centre whose first question after I called was 'are you allright'? Ye gods, I thought, they're actually starting to get the hang of this customer service business. I was allocated a case manager, told to get an insurance quote and to fax it through on Monday which i duly did. Tuesday morning I called to ask for 'David' (people who work in insurance companies don't have last names it seems - I wonder if their hiring policy means they can't hire 2 people with the same name, or whether it means that David #2 becomes 'Claudio'?). David was on the phone apparently but the nice call centre people said he'd call back shortly, which of course he didn't.

Wednesday morning: I call and ask for 'David' again to be told that he was still on the phone. I asked if they could confirm whether the insurance quote I had faxed through had been recieved and the dude on the end of the phone asked what number I had sent it to. Turns out the nice lady in the call centre had given me the wrong fax number and that my quote was somewhere in the wrong state. I asked if they could retrieve it and was told, 'no silly, you can't call a fax machine to find out where it is'...Well yes numb-nuts, but I would have hoped you might know where the feck you're wrongly telling poor customers to send their quotes to!

So, insurance call centre monkey asks me to resend the quote, which would involve me going back to uni to do so.

A few minutes later I get a phonecall from the elusive 'David' - he of the long phonecalls and IQ akin to a retarded chimp. David efficiently informed me that he would be booking in an assessor to come and assess my bike. I interrupt and tell him that there is already an insurance quote and that the grand total was less than $600. He says, 'oh well in that case, your excess is $800 so we can't help you' to which i reply (slightly paraphrased) 'no, monkey boy, I was not at fault, the person who was at fault is also insured by you'. He goes 'oh, well in that case, you need to supply their details so we can contact them' to which i reply 'but i fucking did that on Friday night'.

Thus ensues a painful process of me dictating the details of the foreign born doctor to 'David', who promptly repeated it back incorrectly to me about 4 times.

He then informs me that despite me having obtained an insurance quote for a negligible sum, he will be sending out an assessor tomorrow, in true Australian customer service style 'between 8.30am and 5pm'. I ask if the assessor can perhaps call me before he comes but no, apparently this is not an option.

So here I am, waiting for an insurance assessor to come 'between 8.30am and 5pm' and bitching to fill in the time. I leave for 3 months in Vietnam on the 24th (at which point this blog will revert to being a vietnam blog again) and am hoping that this run of shit luck really doesn't come in three. Or if it does, if the universe can just get #3 out of the way so i can carry on with my life!