So here’s a good story that continues to amaze me… I would have posted this earlier but obviously was not able to for legal reasons.
9/18/07
Vette towed in to our service dept. because it doesn’t run. Our Corvette tech who has owned 27 Vette’s and won a free one from GM for his knowledge of the vehicle (contest back in 98) looks at the car for about 3 seconds and says it was in a flood. So he pulls the carpet up… silt all over the floor pan. Pulls the PCM out… water line inside of it and silt on the bottom. Wiring harness, all electrical equipment, engine, tranny, rear end, frame… must have had water in them at some point but the cars interior was cleaned at some point because there is no silt or water lines inside. We find out soon after that the guy lives in a town that had a flash flood 2 weeks prior… what a shocker.
This is where it starts to get interesting…
About a day after we left the guy a message about his car being a complete loss because its useless to fix he calls back upset (can’t blame him for that) and asks us what he should do. We tell him to call his insurance company and he agrees that is a good idea so he tells our service manager that he’ll call them and call us later that week to let us know what will happen with the car. Keep in mind he is in no way upset with us and has no issues with our service dept because we did everything we could up to this point to help him out and he thanked us several times.
So he never calls us back… doesn’t return our letters, phone calls, emails etc over the next few months and still has not up to this point. We have mailed certified letters that he never signed for because we keep getting them back. I called and found out what bank had a lien on the title, then called them to tell them the story. He has not been late on a payment, has not missed his insurance premium, nothing. Its been paid just as if he was driving it everyday. So why hasn’t this guy called his insurance company to make a claim, the dealership, or the bank to figure out what he should do?
Since it has been here for so long I could technically charge him a daily storage charge on top of his repair order (ours is $20 a day) of $4,120 and the $600 we have as shop cost on his RO. We also have a lien on the title now so the bank is sending a repo truck to pay the balance (we aren’t charging them the storage fee to help them out, just the 600 bucks) and they are going to take possession of the car. Since the car is a total loss and the bank is a small one they are probably going to parts out the car or sell it to a salvage yard to recoup the rest of the loan. They can do this because it has been here for so long and because he has not returned any of their phone calls, emails or letters. They even sent someone to his house a few times and of course he was not there.
So the saga continues and our Vette tech and I are trying to make an offer on the car to the bank so we can parts it out. Rims are chrome aftermarket Vette wheels, has the glass removable roof, all body panels that are fiberglass are still good and some other parts here and there. I want the engine so Jay, Chuck, Bill and I can tear it down and make a monster out of it. Maybe a spare for my SS…
I let you guys know in the next week or 2 what happens because they should be here today to take the car.
