auto update (deer betty 2.0)

so, it’s done…

…blaq betty is now a salvaged vehicle. but she’s still all mine.

due to mileage she was totaled out by progressive, but due to her overall value i decided to keep her and take the salvage payout and will pursue another vehicle and then slowly fix her myself (or with professional help) as we go. it’ll be quite the project, but she’s been too rad a ride to give her up for the low salvage value. i won’t give out real numbers, but i’ll say her rockford fosgate speakers cost more.

the process was interesting.

it took almost three weeks to the day for them to come out and personally look at the car due to scheduling issues. with those kinda of delays i wondered if we’d get this all resolved by the end of the year! damn, was i worried about nothing when it came to that.

they had told me i had to allow an eight hour window for them to come out – eight to five. then they called me monday to confirm we were good for the next morning, only for me to point out we were scheduled for wednesday. fortunately, that was just human error and i was still scheduled to spend my day off on progressive house arrest, as compared to them having the wrong date down and we having to reschedule further out.

wednesday morning i got a call from ishmael that he was on his was and would be there within the hour. it took him about an hour once he got there, and he was very up front with me that due to the mileage and age he was 99.99% sure they’d total her out, as they had totaled out both he AND his wife’s car in the last few months. but he was thorough, and was clearly trying to maximize the value of my vehicle, getting pics of speaker packaging, receipts for the stereo, the wheels, even the original window sticker for her (which i have as the original owner stuck it in with the owner’s manual). he said i’d hear back in a few hours. when i didn’t, i checked my app and saw that she had been totaled. i’m not gonna lie, i was hurt i hadn’t heard it from ish.

but when he called the numbers he gave me were positive. see, this whole time, i was going off a number that my boss had given me but these were significantly higher. all of a sudden it seemed i could keep her AND maybe get another ride to tide me over while we got all right in her world. we agreed to the numbers and he said the next part would go rather quickly. this was basically it:

4:31pm – hung up with ish
4:33pm – got email to confirm i was keeping blaq betty
4:35pm – got text with payout link
4:37pm – finished filling out and submitted simple payout form
4:37pm – opened chase app and money was in bank less than sixty seconds later

now to see where we take this adventure next!