Total loss

It’s confirmed. I’m not getting my car back.

Canadian Direct has decided it’s prohibitively expensive to repair, so I guess that’s yet another thing I need to do this week… Try to find a replacement vehicle. Nothing will compare to my Lexus at that price range (what I’m assuming they’ll offer me, anyhow) so I’ll have to put in several thousand of my own savings to get something reliable that I’ll enjoy driving.

I’ve actually toyed with the idea of going without a car, and renting when I need one… But, I think in the long run that will be completely frustrating and expensive. I know many people do that when they live downtown, but I’ve got plans to ski at least two times a week, and that will get extremely expensive in a hurry if I’m relying on rental cars for this.

So, now it’s negotiating time. Then running around to test drive some options. For the first time in my life, I am drawing a complete blank for ideas on what I’d be happy with, and can afford. I sure wasn’t expecting to buy a new car, and especially not at this time of year.

SIDENOTE: Be careful about ‘saving money’ by buying alternate insurance in British Columbia. I say this because, although I haven’t received a settlement offer yet from CDI, my adjuster has already given me a head’s up regarding the issue with my two outstanding body damage claims with ICBC. Because I hadn’t gotten to fixing my car before this happened, both these areas of damage will depreciate the final settlement offer I will get. When I called ICBC today about getting a cash value for the outstanding claims, their estimator said that it would only be a percentage of what the actual cost of repairs would have been! WHAT THE HELL?? How can they MAKE MONEY because I elected to wait until a better time to repair my car? This is purely insurance hell.

So to conclude, my vehicle will be allocated a cash value, minus the body damage, of which I cannot fully recover from ICBC… And none of this is due to my negligence. I’m going to take a bath on this one, I can feel it already.