In September of 2005, someone I used to know didn’t correctly engage their parking brake while parked in front of my house, and consequently their car rolled backwards down a hill and smashed into a row of cars parked in the parking spaces. One of those cars was mine.

About $2,100 worth of damage and 2 days later, I returned my rental car to progressive and got my car back shiny and like new. I must commend Progressive for their repair process. They are fast, efficient, do wonderful work, and give you a rental car while yours is in the shop.

However, I’m out $500 for the deductable. They tell me that once the other party’s insurance company claims responsibility, I’ll get my $500 back. Usually takes a couple of weeks.

Fast forward 9 months. I still do not have my $500 back. For the past 9 months I have called Progressive about twice a month inquiring about the status of my claim. Everytime they tell me the same thing — the paperwork is in, Allstate has claimed responsibility, and they are just waiting for payment. Should be “a couple of weeks”. After the first 3 months it got handed over to the Progressive “Subjugation” department, which apparently is greek for “Do jack shit until the time expires on the claim and you lose all your money”.

So eventually I got annoyed enough that I tracked down the Allstate rep who was handling the claim and called them myself, despite the fact that this was not my insurance company (The actual person who’s fault it was refused to do anything, go figure). The Allstate rep began giving me more of the same run around, that the paperwork was in, just a matter of time, I would get paid shortly.

Yeah, right.

I asked to speak to her manager instead, then proceeded to give the person hell for a good 15 minutes about how it had been 9 months since the accident occured and there was absolutely no justifiable reason for why it should be taking this long, that it wasn’t even my fault that someone else’s mistake should be costing me ANYTHING (let alone $500), and that I knew they were just trying to wait it out until the subjugation expired and so they wouldn’t have to pay anything, that I wanted it paid immediately, blah blah blah.

The guy started back peddling around minute 9, but I pressed on, making sure to make it the entire 15 minutes. I wanted this guy to want me off the phone so bad he’d make sure and click the right buttons to send me my money.

End result? An hour later the Allstate rep calls me back and says they put the check in the mail this morning. Thank you very little, bitch.

I wonder what I should do with my $500 now though.