I’m having no luck with cars.

First, last July, I had a major car accident that required me to go buy a new car. I bought a used SUV, only a few years old. I was particularly happy that I didn’t get completely dismembered by either experience.

Then, shortly after that, I backed up into a pipe, which smashed my tail light and dented the rear quarter panel. But I overcame that by patching it up.

And now, at the beginning of the week, my car drove into something else. I was caught in a pile up and the airbags went off. The speed involved was not great enough to harm anything more than the front bumper. The damage to the car ahead was just a dent in the trunk lid.

Anyway, my car was deemed not safe to drive by the officer on scene, even though I glibly offered to cut off the airbag hanging out of the steering wheel. So, I watched while it was hooked up to a tow truck. It eventually made its way to a repair shop.
After a bit of effort, I got a rental car through my insurance policy. Seems I opted to pay for that, luckily. I received a phone call from the auto shop asking whether I wanted the car repaired. I said I did. The insurance company phoned me and talked out the deductible and asked about the accident details. Then they sent someone to assess the damage to the car.

They deemed the car not fit to be repaired and wrote it off.

So, that’s just great. I get paid a supposed replacement value because they deem the repair to be to costly. Let’s see how that works.
Yes, replacing the air-bag system, the dash panel, and the plastic bumper shell is an expensive proposition. It’s most likely, though, that the bumper assembly comes completely assembled and just needs to be clipped on and hooked up. There was no damage to the body at all, except what I did last year. It’s all expensive, but more or less fixed by taking bits off and putting the new ones on. No labour-intensive work involved.
But if they pay me the amount the mystery book lists as the value of my car, then they get to take that car and deem it as either beyond repair or salvageable. And, if it’s salvageable (which it is), they can sell it off to someone who can then fix it and sell it. Of course, whoever does that can source parts from scrapped vehicles. It just needs to pass an inspection.

At the very least, they get to recover some money by selling it for scrap. With well over 90% of the parts being completely reusable, it can be used to fix a hundred of its fellows. It’s like an automotive organ donor.

My problem is I don’t think insurance companies are really entitled to recovering money. They get paid well to provide the service they provide. I may have been in receipt of two insurance payouts over the last year, but it doesn’t actually come close to how much I’ve paid them over the last 20 years. And many people pay year after year without ever making a claim. So, I think they should have been more interested in saving me the hassle of needing to go get a new car. The car is repairable, it should not be listed as junk, I don’t want to be spending my time talking to more slick versions of Larry Dallas (from Three’s Company, if anyone remembers that tv show) who are trying to convince me to spend money on heated seats.

So, I’m getting a tricycle.