I need to renew my CCW, the motorhome and the wife's car are both a bit overdue for renewal, and I need to get my eldest to the bank to get her checking account established. That's all out in the same general vicinity, so I cleared my morning to be able to do that. Now that I have a date on the calendar to get the Merc into the shop for the recalls and settlement work, I need to get that insured and registered as well, so I figured I might as well wrap that together with this trip. Step one was to get the Merc back on the insurance. And that's where my morning began to get a bit frustrating.
First of all, the well-intentioned morons that run our state legislature decided a while back that people driving without insurance is a Bad Thing. I agree with them. But then the story gets stupid. In order to prevent that, they decided that if you drop the insurance on the vehicle they will cancel your registration. No matter that I am not putting any single other person at risk or infringing on anyone's rights whatsoever to have an uninsured vehicle parked inside my shop. And when that wasn't enough, they also decided that when you come in to register a vehicle, you have to show that the policy effective date is no fewer than 45 days ago. Since I'm adding a car to my existing policy, I typically just get a document that says this VIN is now covered and the policy itself has been in effect since August of last year. But that doesn't work. Because even though today's date is on the document that says the vehicle is added, the "effective date" is too far in the past.
The rationale for that? "Well," they patronizingly told me, "how do we know that you didn't cancel that policy since last year?".
As though a policy that is only 45 days old can't be canceled??? Like I said: Well-intentioned morons.
So I go to add the car this morning. And the insurance company doesn't open until 9am. Sigh. Okay, I'll try their online vehicle add process.
Oh, you'll get back to me in 1-3 business days with my new coverage? Eff that.
So I wait till 9 and call them. They say there's a greater than 10 minute wait time and they can do the whole thing via text message.
Okay, cool, do that.
"Thank you for your text! A specialist will be in touch within one business day. Hrs (PST): Mon-Fri 7a to 5p"
No, motherberkeleyer, I need this done right berkeleying now.
So I call back. Once I re-navigate their stupid IVR system they tell me again that the hold time will be more than 10 minutes. I say that's fine and I will wait. And *immediately* a human being picks up. She is lovely, helpful, personable, competant, and all-around fabulous to work with. And 10 minutes later I have the document that I need in my email.
Way to use technology to speed things up, people.