Just when youre about to slag off all of French anti-customer service, you talk to someone nice...
On my way back from getting Max yesterday, I saw some broken glass on the street next to some parked cars. Somehow I knew it was "Marcel" (my car)...
After a brief moment of panic, I called my insurance company's hotline. Here is the response I got, "Sorry, Madame, this isn't an emergency." The positive side is that I realized I didn't have the French vocabulary to describe what had happened. It wasn't cambriolage because nothing was stolen, it wasn't bracage because the car wasn't hijacked, it was just busted...so I reverted to indirect speech: on est entré dans ma voiture et cassé un vitre (someone went into my car and broke the window).
Shaking from frustration and the fear of knowing some unkown person was touching my stuff, I called the regular number for the insurance company. Please press star, please press 1 for auto, please press 3 for a sinistre, which I guess this was. I finally got to the service where the recording said, there is a long wait, please call back which I did 10 mnutes later. And they were closed. Grrrr!
So I checked on line since they said I could declare my sinistre on line. I signed up and waited for my email confirmation with my password allowing me to make my declaration. (I am still waiting over 36 hours later.) I then called the number that said they were avaiable until 8pm which brought me to the same message that I needed to call back tomorrow or declare on line. I was about to star ranting about the French and throwing things at my French other half.
Meanwhile, I realized I'd have to go to the police station. Again! Three times a charm. Once for credit card fraud, a second time for credit card fraud which turned out to be a legit debit that I just didn't recognize and now a third time for the car. I was getting to know my local commisariat too well!
I decided to call the open til 8PM number again and go through the wrong service. I explained my situation to the nice lady in the non-sinistre service who told me that I could deal with it in the morning. Ah....
So in the morning, I called the sinistre service who told me the good news : it's fully covered and since nothing's stolen (except a pack of trident cinnamon gum!) I don't have to go to the police. GMF lady, I *heart* you.
3 comments:
Terrible! Your Trident cinnamon gum! It's impossible to get here.
I'm glad you got your insurance sorted. Sorry your car was broken into on your street though, that's not nice.
Good luck on Wednesday! If there's anyway that we can get over to the library, we'll try.
Rachael
I had this happen to me and we called Carglass first. They took care of it (like on TV!). I think you just have to give them your insurance number.
It worked out fine in the end. The best part was my mom's reaction which was, "they didn't take anything? In NJ, they would have taken the car for a joyride, slashes the tired, trashed the car and ditched it in Newark".
Carglass is a savior.
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