I’d like to state here, unequivocally, that shopping for commercial truck insurance is as tedious and painful as plucking out every hair on your body with a pair of bamboo tweezers. I feel like George will likely have PTSD from his recent experience, and I will suffer residual effects from having to listen to the multitude of ridiculous conversations he’s had to have.
I’m not crazy about any kind of insurance, I think the insurance companies have been allowed to rule the world from behind the scenes, and I find most of their practices insidious and borderline criminal. Having to insure every aspect of your life drives the cost of everything up, and they name the price and parameters of how you’re allowed to do basically everything, including die. Somehow, that just don’t seem right.
It’s evil. It’s a necessary evil, and it’s forced upon us by law, so we put up with the incredibly weird questions and long wait times to talk to people who take our money into the black hole of insurance premiums and rarely give any of it back.
Mailed straight from the bowels of hell.After 18 minutes of wait time, suffering through a Muzak rendition of “Cold as Ice,” and 18 fake pick-ups (a recorded voice says, “Hello, thank you for calling,” and just as you go to speak it says, “A customer service agent will be with you soon”), muzak “Cold as Ice” returns to remind you of the caring customer service you’re getting. Just as you lose the will to live, a real live person, who doesn’t have a great command of the English language answers, “Hello, thank you for calling this day, my name is Melinda and how can I assist you?”
“Yes Melinda, I need a quote for commercial truck insurance.”
“Thank you, please. A few questions are necessary. Will you be driving the truck more than 15 miles a day?”
“Lord, I hope so.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lord. Will you be driving the truck more than 15 miles a day?”
“Yes, my name isn’t Lord.”
“Ha ha, you’re welcome, Mr. Lord. Does the truck require highway usage?”
“Yes. It’s a commercial vehicle. I need commercial vehicle insurance.”
“Hello, thank you for calling this day, Mr. Lord. A few questions are necessary.”
“Do you have a website or something I can just fill a form out on to get a quote?”
“Yes. I can assist you this day. Will you be hauling commercial freight?”
“Yes.”
“Does this freight require more than 15 miles a day?”
“Yes.”
“Are you epileptic, or have you ever been tazed by a rabid gnome in the Forest of Doom?”
“What?”
“Oh haha, sorry Mr. Lord, I was reading from my X-Box live script this day.”
“So this is a call center, and you’re going to feed my information into the computer to give every insurance agent in the state of Ohio my contact, so I can get spam and unsolicited phone calls for the next six months about truck insurance?”
“I can assist you with an insurance quote, Mr. Lord. A few questions are necessary…”
“Yeah, you can just tell me where to find one of those rabid gnomes so I can fling myself in front of it and hope for a quick death.”
“Yes, Mr. Lord, we do life insurance quotes as well.”
Clearly, this is where being a member of OOIDA is beneficial. After a couple of calls to them, George got the information he needed to at least avoid the Melindas of the world, and carry on with our law abiding money hemorrhage in an orderly fashion.
