Pick your Battles! - July 2008

Note To Reader: On the grounds that I might have tainted our case, I have had to exercise every ounce of restraint to keep from blogging about this, but now that we have our settlement check in hand, here goes!!!

Early in July Jeremy and I made our weekly grocery run to XXX-Mart (you know who I mean!). As with many of the super centers, this one was paired with a XXX’s Club. (Man I just realized that all those X’s make it look like we are doing our grocery shopping at the adult book store.

Anyhow, when these two establishments share the same property, there is often an adjoining parking lot (See Google Earth diagram for the visual)… I LOVE GOOGLE EARTH!!!

As you can see, we were parked in said adjoining parking lot which was on the lower side of a slight incline, and headed in to get the goods. About 40 min later we returned to the truck with a full cart of groceries and all was well until we rounded the corner and were stopped in our tracks.

Have you ever herd that old adage that S%*t rolls down hill? Well so do shopping carts. At some point while we were inside shopping, a gigantic, double barreled, tank of a shopping cart slammed into the back end of Moose leaving a pretty big dent and chipped paint everywhere!!!. (See photos.) Lets just say, it would be an under statement to say that we were upset. I calmly removed the cart from Moose’s tail gate and silently made my way across the parking lot to the buggy return to find it over flowing and I snapped, not in a crazy mail man sort of way, but in a smart decisive sort of way. I'd decided we were going to fight this battle. I marched back to the truck where Jeremy had just finished loading the groceries and announced to his agreement that we were "Filing a damage report."

After 30 min of searching for a manager, giving our information and statement of what happened, and then returning to the scene of the crime to take pictures, not to mention that we had to endure jerky comments about our situation from the cart boys that were leaning against the wall instead of DOING THEIR JOB, we finally left and headed for home.

Note to Sue: Thanks for letting me barrow you camera Sue! BIG HELP!!!

Over the next couple of hours, we contacted our insurance company and discovered that a cart hitting your car does not fall under comprehensive property damage, which has a much lower deductible. It would actually be covered under collision because it is considered a "wind powered unoccupied vehicle. We also discovered that our milk jug was leaking and had leaked all over Moose’s cargo area. Needless to say we stayed in for the rest of the day and plotted our next move.

Three days later the claims agent called us to take our statement. And surprise surprise, our statement and the store statement conflicted. They said that the cart return was only half full and we said that it was full to the point of overflowing. She was really nice and explained that the next steps would be that they would go back to the store and see if they wanted to change their minds about the status of the cart return. If they didn’t, which they didn’t, then she would request the video to find out what actually happened. I just have one thing to say, thank the LORD for surveillance cameras!!!

Four min. before we exited the store, a gentleman attempted to put his cart in the return and couldn’t because it was full and overflowing into the driving lane, so he placed the cart beside the return pointing down the hill. Well it shouldn’t take much to figure out what happened next. Moments later the incredible hulk card had begun making his way quickly down the hill aimed straight at moose’s behind, and the rest is history.

The tape proved that we were telling the truth!!! Due to the inattentive cart boys, the store was negligent and there fore liable for our damages. Late last week, we received a check for the full amount of the repair!

The moral of this story is that some battles are worth picking especially when you know you’re right!

Till next time,
Bon Voyage!