Word to the Wise

After

Before

Don't get into a car accident.Yeah, I know—gee, Donna, RILLY!?

Bix was finally able to come home this past Saturday morning.  Christ, I missed him!

Almost 4 weeks after our sad fender bender and I'm still jumping through hoops to get the insurance payout.

At the three week mark, last Thursday, I received the first of the two payouts. The second one's for supplemental repairs—damage not seen on first, cursory, inspection—and will arrive later today. Hopefully.

I need to then send them off to my car loan's financiers. They, in turn, need to endorse the checks and mail them back to me. Only then can I deposit the dough in my woefully depleted savings account.

I'm lucky as ALL hell that I had the dosh in there (previously unneeded emergency funds—yea!) or else it woulda been another two weeks or so before I'd have had my beloved Bix back.

The insurance customer service rep was bad enough with her poor communication skills—her inability to explain what needed to happen in layman's terms versus industry jargon. This was compounded by her unfortunate habit of supplying incomplete and, occasionally, inaccurate info. Mind you, she was generally, at least in the beginning, very nice. Nice is good but competent would've been better.

Then there was the financial rep from the corp. that holds my car loan. Jen was lovely enough to call them to find out where I should send the check and asked if there was anything else that needed to be done beyond posting the check to the provided address.

The labyrinth of Versailles—simple stuff in comparison

Not only did they give Jen the WRONG address for sending my already late insurance check, their instructions on what to send, were ridiculously deficient. I got the check back, unendorsed, with a cryptic note. Jen called again, got a different rep who provided more complete and, hopefully, accurate info.

I'll send both checks off together. It feels like I'll be sending them off into a void, into deep uncharted waters. How do I know that this second customer service rep gave all the info needed for processing?

HOW do these communication challenged individuals get put into positions where clear, direct, comprehensive, accurate communication skills are imperative? They've obvs never gotten the Pro-Tips that:

• Someone with info to impart should never assume that, what is evident and all gee-duh-of-course to them is just so for the person to whom they're speaking.
• Industry jargoning should be avoided at all costs. Customers aren't dimwits, they're just not hip to all the insider lingo. Getting blank stares or emails with many question marks?  Paraphrase to make sure understanding's been achieved.
• Sequential thinking and it's offspring, sequential communicating, are mega key when explaining complicated concepts (and the rigmarole that I've been put through def counts as complicated). Thoughts, the info, that needs to be conveyed, should be organized and laid it out in one, two, three, consecutive steps.

It really would've helped if the insurance rep had outlined the process from the very beginning. Instead, I was sent through the insurance industry equivalent of a Victorian hedge maze...blindfolded. Funnily enough, accompanying the check I received late last week was an outline of the process I'd just been through. If she'd emailed this to me in the beginning, the path would've been smoother and far less frustrating.

But, hey, that would've made things WAY too simple. Where's the fun in that?