Update: Georgia DOT and State Farm (long)

["Neal Tovsen" <sixteen.volt@verizon.net>]

If you didn't catch the beginning of my saga, I hit some NASTY screwed-up
pavement seams in a construction zone in Macon, GA. I was on the way home
from Brian's engine swap party in Atlanta a few weeks ago. Bent ALL FOUR of
my OZ wheels, knocked my alignment out, blew a strut bearing and cracked my
windshield...among other things!

I sent off the paperwork to GA-DOT, but when they told me it would be at
least 30 days until they got back to me, I decided to bring in State Farm. I
wanted to avoid bringing in the insurance company for the usual reasons, but
couldn't risk that GA-DOT wouldn't own-up to the incident.

Fortunately, Katie and I switched to State Farm just a few months ago from
Geico. We also put full comprehensive/collision coverage on the Scirocco,
which we didn't have before. I can now safely say that, not only did these
decisions pay off, but I think I may have found the best insurance company
out there!

The initial estimate was at the State Farm place, but they couldn't assess
the suspension & wheel damage there, so they told me they would meet me at
the shop when I had the car re-aligned.

This morning, Doug from State Farm met me and Steve from Cars & Concepts at
the shop. He looked over the car, talked to Steve a bit, and waited while
the car was hooked up to the alignment rack. Doug was SUPER-friendly,
commented on how clean my car was (glad I washed it yesterday!), and signed
off on EVERY repair estimate that Steve had given him, without any hassle at
all. With all the damage, including basically all the front suspension
components, windshield, alignment, replacing two wheels and repairing the
other two, the total came to over $2400. He even INCREASED a couple numbers
he thought were too low! I also mentioned that I have so far been
unsuccessful in finding two replacement wheels, and he told me to give them
a call if I have to replace all four.

My agent also said that, if GA-DOT doesn't pay for the damages, they will
assign the "fault" to me since there is no one else to blame. However, as
long as things are good for the next year or two, my rates will go up $70 a
year at most for the next two years, and perhaps not at all. I can live with
that.

The real good news is that the rear beam checked out OK on the alignment
rack. It looks like I have a bent control arm and bad wheel bearing in
addition to the other damage. At first, even I thought Steve's estimate to
be overkill when he started including stuff like wheel bearings, but it is
now looking like he knows what he's doing. My car will be back up to snuff
in no time!

I heard a lot of good things about State Farm before we joined, and now I
have my own recommendation to add. They're awesome.

It is starting to look like a good day...

Neal


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