I can’t recall the first time I heard about how wasteful the public sector is, and those claims have only ramped up under the new administration as evinced by their campaign to eradicate public services, agencies, and personnel from the payroll and to the detriment of the public good. Though, I worked for several years in the public sector and can speak to a degree of wastefulness and taking advantage of “the system.” We would often pad our timesheets, take longer than was necessary to do jobs – and with more people than necessary on those jobs. But we always got the needed work done, and we also responded to tasks as they popped up. Yeah, we may have dragged our feet a little and taken too long of lunches, but we didn’t slack when it came to the quality of the work or our understanding of what needed to be done to get the job done right. Interestingly, we often collaborated with private enterprise as well, and I can tell you from firsthand experience there also that they’re no better than the public sector – especially when they’re getting paid by public money. So, it would seem everyone tries to fleece the people. That’s not a defense, just an acknowledgement of the reality. But I’d actually argue the private sector is worse.

A couple columns ago I mentioned my little vehicular mishap and the early stages of trying to determine whether I’d be able to salvage my car or have to get a new one. As I write this, four weeks to the day of the accident and my submission of the claim, having gotten no direct help from my insurance company (business 1; B1) as they’d passed me off to a third party to handle the process (business 2; B2) who eventually had to work with a fourth party (business 3; B3) to get the final estimate, I’m left flustered. The representative from B2 has been amazing and done everything within her power to communicate and move things along. With B1 having effectively wiped their hands of the problem – that is, until it’s time to pay the settlement – the ball is in B3’s court, as that’s who is supposed to make the final determination. Keep in mind I’d already gotten an estimate from a collision repair place effectively totaling the car (damages exceeding 75% of its value) – all B3 had to do was go onsite and put their eyes on it to confirm that was the case. They delayed, or more accurately, simply didn’t act for about 10 days until upper management at B2 intervened and contacted upper management at B3. Twenty-four days later, an adjuster finally went onsite, and four days later (28 total) they still haven’t submitted that report. B1 fumbled along the way numerous times also, assigning and then unassigning people who never bothered to reach out and then just turning it over to B2 who is contractually obligated to work with B3.

I’ve since bought a new car, as the limit on my rental reimbursement was going to run out at 30 days and you can’t just demand a car you want and have it be available. I lost one after putting down a (refundable) deposit because of the delay – the dealer wouldn’t hold it for more than a week, understandably. This caused me to have to buy another car out-of-state for logistics purposes and that cost me almost an extra two grand. As I write, I don’t have my settlement check. As I scroll through the emails and texts from B3, they’re totally unprofessional and lacking any sense of concern or responsibility on their end, with tons of shorthand and misspelled words (basically how a teenager might text), and the names of their “representatives” are comical – one is named Taj Mahal Ijiran, and the other is Ester Austria. I had to ask the only reliable person in this whole chain of events, from B2, if this was a scam; she said she’d heard that concern before but that it is not. She voiced that she was “angry” and “frustrated” by how long this has taken, and I responded that that makes two of us.

Almost everyone involved in my insurance claim left me hanging and in limbo for far too long. They got their money and they’re not trying to give any out. (Image retrieved from here and comes courtesy of Pixabay)

Now, these are private companies not sucking off the teat of the public, but off of individuals who are reliant on good customer service when it counts and the compensation due us from the insurance policies we hold and pay for. I never once heard from my actual insurance agent (B1) besides two short emails saying his hands were tied and there was nothing he could do to move things along. The collision estimate company was timely and efficient. And as a representative of her company (B2), the third-party conduit has been great. But I don’t know why all these external companies need to be brought into the mix. The ball really got dropped when B3 showed up in the picture. I learned long ago that the more you farm out the less control you have over the final product. That has been the case here by far.

Of course, while I’m griping about all this, I have to go back to the root of the problem that jumpstarted all this frustration – the accident. While I was trying to avoid one, I’m not the first to point out, or the first to accept, had I been going a little slower, perhaps my response time would’ve been better, and I could’ve escaped with my old car and no headaches. But the milk has been spilled, and here we are…

Two of my worst qualities by far are my impatience and stubbornness, and I’m sure those are on full display during this whole ordeal. That the accident occurred on the very first day of my work/pleasure travels looms over me as an ominous sign. Other things have not gone as planned since then, most notably the whole lady-friend thing (see last month’s column), but certainly whether I need to be out here for as long as I’ll be and what I’ve committed to (i.e., already paid for). I’ve had problems in the past with biting off more than I can chew, and this may play out to be one of those cases – it certainly looks to be that way a month in. It’s also a case, perhaps, of not really knowing what I want or what I’m looking for, and I know that sounds ambiguous, but I either can’t or don’t want to articulate it in greater depth at the moment (maybe next month). For the time being, my ire is aimed at the failures of B1 and B3 to do their job efficiently. The ire directed at yours truly can wait – for now…

I am admittedly easily frustrated by businesses and companies that don’t do their jobs well or quickly. In my day-to-day interactions with people in places of commerce (e.g., restaurants, grocery stores, etc.), I often find my blood boiling a little more quickly than I’d like or is sometimes, frankly, appropriate. I need to slow down. I need to accept that the world doesn’t operate on my schedule, and rarely will anything ever go “my way.” This is one of those times. Perhaps this test of patience will be good for me. Perhaps I’ll learn to slow down. Perhaps I’ll learn to go with the flow. But if history is any indication, all of that is unlikely, and I’ll continue to be disappointed in private businesses and people broadly. So it goes…

Postscript: One month after the claim was filed, I accepted a settlement after some negotiation, though it was less than I thought was fair based on some upgrades I’d done to the car that weren’t covered under my insurance, even though I’d let my insurance agent know I was doing them – another failure by B1. I’d considered arbitration but didn’t want to drag out any longer and didn’t know if I’d be successful anyway, and it would cost me extra to pay a lawyer, so I just cut my losses – and kept my loss of faith in private industry…

Marco Esquandoles
Unserved Customer