Got that scratch.

Everyone loves hitting my new cars, apparently crazy or uninsured people in particular. Haven't taken any good pics during the daylight yet, been busy working and trying to sort it out. Kinda of weird story so far, goes something like this.

10/15/13 12:30 PM Head out to make a run to the bank, find this Post-it note on my car door handle:



I do notice a scratch and dent in the rear door on the drivers side, and there is a new Murano that has been crowding my parking after the fact on several occasions. So this all adds up.

10/15/13 7:30 PM Leaving with my renter to go meet up with some friends we notice the Maroon Murano is in the parking lot. It appears to have significantly more damage than just having scratched my car. The whole front passenger light assembly is torn out, along with that side of the bumper, the panels on that side, and the front corner is just a mess. It didn't have this damage the last time I saw it, it's all occurred within the last day or two.

The driver is actually just sitting in the vehicle. I knock on the window and explain to the lady that she's hit my car and I'd like to get some insurance information. She denies having hit my vehicle so I get out a tape measure to double check the damage on my vehicle vs hers:





You can't really see it in these pictures, it's pretty dark out and the angle is odd on her car with the tire turned, but there is a jagged bit sticking out right (hidden behind the tape measure) at the top of her wheel well which is precisely at the same height as the damage on my C, 80 centimeters. Someone hit my Rogue in exactly the same manner when pulling out and the top of the wheel well was the exact same part of their car that came into contact with mine, so I'm well enough convinced shes done it.

I ask for her information, and she continues do deny doing it as well as refuses to give me a name or address. I'm obviously getting nowhere and have to leave so I do.

10/15/13 8:00 PM After arriving at my destination I decide to call up my mom, after all she owns a number of condos in the same complex and is a lot more knowledgeable what we do in these incidents.

10/16/13 1:30 AM Unable to sleep I go snoop on her car. I'm able to ascertain a security badge and where she works, but the name isn't visible. It's a major hospitable in town, with lots of branches, so this isn't a particularly useful bit of information.

10/16/13 9:00 AM I go to the condo association and inquire about this person. She knows everyone that lives here after all and should be able to get me their name, address, phone number and the like. No luck here, this isn't a condo owner or known renter, probably staying with a boyfriend or something like that.

10/16/13 12:30 PM I talk to my insurance company to see how they want me to proceed . They tell me that if I do have to pay my own deductible for someone else hitting me (again) that it won't count against my insurance costs. They'll go after the person for their money and mine, if I can get them enough information on them.

10/16/13 1:30 PM I schedule an appointment with a collision center to get an estimate first thing in the morning.

10/16/13 7:30 PM I get home from work and wait a bit to see if she shows up at the same time again. Eventually I get tired of waiting and start knocking on doors, maybe I can figure out where she lives or at least locate my witness. There are only two dozen potential units she could be staying in and since one of those is mine and I know a few of the other owners I figure it'll be a lot faster way to track her down. First guy is very friendly and starts to talk my ear off.

My phone rings interrupting the conversation, since I had called my mother earlier and she's retired she has decided to snoop around as well and was in the parking lot. When I meet her out there, the Murano is there. I show her the damage on my car and we start talking about the damage on the Murano, when the Murano driver, who is apparently still in the vehicle, rolls down the window and tells us that the damage we see "didn't happen here". We take the opportunity to point out that we have an eyewitness to the incident with my C and request her insurance info. She claims to not have it on her, and will grab it for us. After sitting in her car for a few more minutes she starts it up and drives off, with my mother knocking on the window as she does so. I wish I had video of this, but I was too busy laughing. Shredded parts of the front end of the Murano were dragging on the ground as she pulled away.

We call the police, might as well report something and maybe we'll get some more info if we're lucky. I'm still a bit hesitant on the matter since the "eyewitness" is nothing but an unsigned Post-it note at the moment, I only knocked on one door and hadn't been able to track them down yet. The officer arrives and starts to take some information, but kinda gives us that look as I try to explain I have a witness but I don't have their information on me.

Miraculously one of the neighbors arrives home as we are talking comes over and explains that he and his wife both saw the incident. Apparently they were in the parking lot when she pulled in around 8 PM on the 14th and hit a different car as she tried to park. They went over to stop her, and she appeared inebriated when she got out of the vehicle, but being confronted by people she eventually got back in and hit my car as she pulled out and drove away.

10/16/13 9:30 PM I call up my step mother who works at the same hospitable as this person. As gossip mongering as she is, she hasn't heard anything about any incidents like this with one of the other employees. I figured as much, but I know she's now got her ear to the ground.



So that's about it up to current. Best I can say is that this lady went on one hell of a bender Monday night, and had a pretty major accident on the way home, likely a hit-skip before arriving here and hitting several more cars in the parking lot, with possibly more cars hit in between. She isn't very responsive, and has now driven away at least twice after being confronted about it.

Some people just suck, but I'm not done with her yet.

 

First thing I did. The officer wasn't allowed to tell us much, but she did say the vehicle wasn't registered in the area, which confirms what the condo association person told me. If I understand it correctly I can still fill out a request form with the plate number and take it to the DMV to get the registration information, for a small fee of course.

I also found out that my CCW permit wasn't in the right place near the beggining of my profile, it was near the end instead right after a note about some black guy who was wanted for a number of felonies who used my SS# number for something at some point. Time to pull a credit report I guess, though I know when I bought my C 6 months ago that I was at what was likely an all time high credit score for me.

 

Yup, and if it was a lighter hit (the scratch is indented) and my car was a few years older I wouldn't even care about the damage.

My insurance was hoping I could give them more than just the plate number. Ultimately I am just getting a quote to find out if the damage is greater than my $500 deductible, and will have it repaired ASAP.

This is where I would consider going if my insurance didn't already cover it. I would still need her name to file against though. My max loss is my deductible, and I don't know if that's really enough to take her to small claims for.


I originally intended to simply get her insurance info and call it a day, but it hasn't worked out that way. Normally I'm the last person to call the police for a scratch, make it right and there is usually no need to suffer points on your license or similar. On the other hand, having heard the eyewitness testimony to her ping pong parking I'm glad that it escalated to filing a report on her.

 

10/17/13 8:00 AM Went to the collision shop for an estimate. Shop was substandard, not likely to go back to this one, but I got what I was looking for:



As I expected well over my deductible, even assuming there will be some + or - since it's just an estimate.

Better image of the damage:



Still a little hard to see because I couldn't get a shot that didn't mirror a good chunk of the rest of the parking lot, it was washed and waxed just last week (and even clay barred). It does show the scratch at the top and dent at the bottom though. The scratch is indented, particularly at the end of it, because it was caused by a jagged bit of metal sticking out from her car...rather than just being the little wheel well rub it would have been if she hadn't just tore off that front corner of her car.

 

I realized pretty quickly I should have grabbed I when her car was there all night. I'm still gonna see if that DMV request form nets me anything, the vin might be on there.

 

The top is a crease, pretty sure it's outside the bounds of a fix-a-dent guy. I've used one before and had a similarly unpoppable dent.

 

No sign of the Murano since Wednesday evening when we filed the police report after she drove off on us. Been wondering when the ambulance chasers and collision centers would start calling, this usually happens just a couple days after any police report is filed.

I looked into the BMV request form, but because of a privacy law passed in the 90s I don't qualify as a person who can get that information. There are quite a few exceptions like insurance agencies, towing companies, PIs, companies doing background checks, but not for an individual who's car was hit. Ah well, at least I learned how my insurance company does it.


10/18/13 9:00 AM Went back to the condo association to give them additional information, such as the fact that a police report had been filed. Told her that the people I spoke to thought the lady was entering my building instead of the one next to me and we went over the owner list again. Nothing really rang a bell. I asked about the unit below me, since I remember some sort of nurse moving in, and I know the car driver works at a hospital. No, some guy lives there, but his mother stops by occasionally and she might be old enough to fit the description. Condo person calls him up and asks about the Murano, but he doesn't know anything about it.

I have the morning of at least and decide to knock on a few doors again and start crossing units off my list. Asian guy and girlfriend, check, not them, my unit, check, not me. I run into a guy just leaving and ask him real quick, no he doesn't know anything, ask him what unit, the one below me, check it off, then decide against that and make a notation for that unit "Son...". He was a hair startled and I considered following him, but that'd be crazy, so I step outside again to see if I can tell from outside who is home and knock on their doors next. Same guy's girlfriend was just arriving home and while stopped at the parking lot entrance they have a nice car to car conversation, I'm pretty far away, but he seems to be conveying to her what I had just spoken to to him about. I realize most people could care less about a stranger asking them about an accident, but he seems to have taken it to heart, either because he really wants to help out or...


10/18/13 11:00 AM Riiiing, riiing...I had stopped for a bit, got cleaned up for the day and was just wasting some time before a lunch meeting when my phone rang. I checked it was a local number, so probably not a telemarketer (though they have been falsifying local area codes recently), but I didn't recognize it. On the phone was a local collision center, yup, the police report was released this morning. Seemed like a nice guy, promised all sorts of extras probably worth as much as the actual damage itself was. We're talking a bit and I tell him I'm still working on getting info on the person who hit me before I jump into repairs. He seems a bit surprised and reads off the police report the name and address of the person whom the vehicle is registered to, it is after all not protected information anymore now that it's on a public record.

I go back to the condo association with the name, it's the father of the person whom they had called earlier, the father of that same person whom I had spoken with as well. Chances are the driver was the vehicle owner's wife, the condo owner's mother, and the exact same nurse I was asking about earlier. No wonder he was spooked and had to convey the information to his girlfriend immediately, it's kinda nice to know my intuition is still sharp.


I hate scum like this, but now I have the name and address of the owner and his son. The goal line is in sight.

 

10/18/13 5:00 PM - I perform a quick white pages search online and get the phone number for the owner of the vehicle. A nice little link on the page suggests people he knows (thanks whitepages.com), which also helps me confirm the name and age of his wife that was driving it, I already had the name in my notes, but wasn't 100% sure it was the mother/driver until now. No voicemail set up on his phone number, so I'm unable to leave a message.

 

Might not be much to tell for a bit, worked late last night and will be working all day today. Still no answer at the listed phone number of the vehicle owner. I have stopped or driven by the address a couple of times since it's only a few miles down the road, no one was home except when I went by at 3 AM. One of his neighbors did confirm it was his house, but said she had never seen the wife. Gonna stop by my insurance agent Tuesday morning and give him everything I have and start the process of getting my car into the shop for repairs.