Do you remember that famous line? It made actress Bea Arthur a star in the old 1970s sitcom Maude, and in its time, it was as common as Archie Bunker’s “Stifle” order to his wife, or “Sit on it” from Happy Days.

Well, in yesterday’s blog I wrote about how I was gloating to my cousin Berni Frees back in Michigan about our pretty blue sky, and how nice the weather is here in Apache Junction, Arizona. Guess what? Yesterday evening God put on a beauty lightshow, as streaks of lighting illuminated the mountains, and thunder rumbled across the Valley of the Sun, followed by rain! It was just God’s way of reminding me who’s in charge. Okay Big Guy, I get the message!

We had a real treat yesterday. We spent some time visiting with two of our favorite RVing friends, Ed and Alice Allard, at their park model in Sunrise RV Resort, a couple of miles from our place.

We have known Ed and Alice since very early in our fulltiming days, and we have run into them at RV parks, rallies, and all kinds of places, in every corner of the country. Some of these encounters have been planned, and other times fate has just put us in the same place at the same time. When this happens, it’s never hard to spot my buddy Ed, since he’s about seven feet tall (okay six feet eleven inches, but let’s not quibble).

And we’ve had some near misses too. One time we pulled in Country Roads RV Park in Lake Delton, Wisconsin, only to learn that Ed and Alice had left not more than a half hour before our arrival. Another time, we were northbound on U.S. Highway 31, headed toward Fisherman’s Landing RV park in Muskegon, Michigan, and our cell phone rang. It was Ed and Alice, who had just passed us going in the opposite direction. They had  left Fisherman’s Landing, and were headed to Elkhart Campground in Elkhart, Indiana, which we had left a couple of hours earlier! Serendipity, my friends.

I wrote in a blog a while back that we sure missed our Olympian Wave 8 catalytic heater, which we left in our bus conversion for the new owner, and Ed had e-mailed me to say that they had an Olympian Wave 6 that they no longer used, and we were welcome to it. What a wonderful gift! Thanks Ed and Alice!

After we left Ed and Alice, we stopped at some local RV parks to drop off sample bundles of the Gypsy Journal. Or at least we tried to. The problem in Apache Junction and east Mesa, as in a lot of snowbird locations, is that what they call RV parks usually have about 75% park model trailers, with just a handful of RV sites. We’ve been at this a long, long time, and we know our potential market. Folks in park models are not usually into traveling as much as our reader base is, and we get very few subscribers from places like that.

We did drop off a couple of bundles, but by then it was getting late in the day, and Terry’s mom called to say that our bedroom day/night shades had been delivered, so we headed to her parents’ house to pick them up. They were the last remaining things we needed to complete the insurance claim from our burglary and vandalism. We’ve never installed day/night shades, but the folks at the RV repair shop that did the rest of our work told Miss Terry that they are easy to replace, and she, as always, is confident that she can handle the task. I’m the eye candy, all I have to do is stand around and look pretty while she does the work.

Thought For The Day – Have you noticed that they are making adults much younger these days?

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I’ve gotten a lot of e-mail asking where we are with the insurance company, following our burglary to our motorhome. As regular blog readers know, at first we were having a real hassle with our insurance company, National Interstate, and when we called our agent, PoliSeek, they told me they didn’t get involved in problems like that and referred me back to the same claims adjuster at National Interstate who was giving us all the problems.

After I wrote about the problem in the blog and it became a topic of discussion on several RV internet forums, most notably the Escapees, people started calling their agents and National Interstate asking if they could expect the same lack of service if they had a claim.

Cheryl Howarth from Miller Insurance in Lake Oswego, Oregon, and another agent from South Dakota, both of whom have a lot of RV owners as customers, took it upon themselves to contact National Interstate on our behalf. The response from the company was immediate, and within an hour or so the same claims adjuster who had been giving us grief was on the telephone bending over backwards to accommodate our every need.

We now have been reimbursed for all of the items that were stolen or vandalized, except for one small check that we should receive this week, and as I understand it, the shop in Indiana that did our repairs has also been paid, except for two sets of day/night shades that we are still waiting on the factory to send to us.

Fourteen days after our burglary, a representative from PoliSeek called in response to the internet uproar that had resulted, and the next day her supervisor called. They wanted to know what they could do to help, and I told them that they were too late, other agents had handled the problem for us. The supervisor told me that it really wasn’t their job to deal with the insurance company for us. In other words, they’ll take our money, but they don’t want to get involved if we have a problem. So why have an agent in the first place?

As soon as life gets back to normal after the holidays, we will be talking to Cheryl at Miller Insurance about placing all of our business with her. From all of the good feedback I have gotten from customers of Progressive, I think that’s who we’ll end up with, if Cheryl represents them. She has earned our business, and I’d much rather she makes a commission on our insurance policies. PoliSeek has seen the last penny they’ll ever get from me. If you are looking for RV insurance, or are thinking about moving your business, I’d readily recommend Cheryl. I’d recommend the agent in South Dakota as well, but I never did get her full name or the name of the agency she works for.

While Miss Terry was busy stuffing envelopes yesterday, Bad Nick wrote a new Bad Nick Blog post titled The GPS Made Me Do It. Check it out and leave a comment. 

Thought For The Day – A friend is someone who reaches for your hand, but touches your heart.

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If you see Noah, tell him I’d like to swap a really nice Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome for his ark!

It has been raining ever since we got back to Summerdale, and I’m starting to collect two of every critter I see, just in case. Here are a couple of photos of the puddles taken from in front of our motorhome yesterday morning. Everywhere we step, the ground is just saturated.

A lot of blog readers have e-mailed asking me how our insurance company is treating us since we were burglarized and vandalized the evening of December 4^th. I have held off on saying much, hoping to keep a spirit of cooperation going. But since that hasn’t done us any good, here is how the situation looks from my point of view. Please excuse the rant, but we feel like we are being victimized for a second time.

We have used PoliSeek (formerly AON) as our insurance agent for most of the ten years we have been on the road. First they placed us with Royal Sun Alliance, and when that company stopped covering RVs, they switched us to National Interstate. In all of that time, we have faithfully paid our premiums on time and have never had a claim.

We are supposed to have a disappearing deductible, which means that for every year that we don’t have a claim, our deductible goes down by 10%. We also pay extra for full replacement coverage of our RV and contents.

So far, I am very unhappy with the response from both PoliSeek and National Interstate. Our crime happened late on a Friday evening. We called the next morning (Saturday), and got a message to call back on Monday. So we were left to fend for ourselves all weekend in 12 degree weather in northern Indiana with an RV with a window busted out. We could not leave the RV parked and unsecured and stay in a motel or everything else in it could have been stolen. Fortunately, Michele Henry from Phoenix Commercial Paint opened her shop up for us so we could get in out of the cold over the weekend.

On Monday, three days after the incident, I talked to the first claims adjuster, and he e-mailed me a Vandalism Affidavit and requested that I fill it out, have it notarized, and return it to him by fax. He also said to send him a list of any items that were stolen. I did so, and called him back an hour or so later to tell him that they had been faxed, and got a message that he was out of the office. As it turns out, he was out of the office for the next week.

We managed to contact a different adjuster, who said she was filling in for him, and she asked me to mail her hard copies of the forms, which we did. When I asked her about specific repairs and what was covered and how to get the repairs done so we could get back on the road and to warmer weather to avoid an incoming blizzard, her answer to every question was “I don’t know, I’ll have to get back to you.” The shop that did the initial repairs so we could get out of cold, snowy Indiana is getting the same run around.

Once our motorhome was drivable again, the second adjuster said to go to Camping World in Robertsdale, Alabama to get an estimate for the repairs that are still needed. I did so and faxed National Interstate that information.

Monday, a week after I spoke to him, the first adjuster called back and wants to start from square one all over again, and when I asked about the repairs still needed, his answer was the standard “I don’t know, I’ll have to get back to you.”

I was told that our disappearing deductible does not apply, because we also kept our bus conversion insured with them until it was sold. As for our total replacement coverage, that apparently only applies to items not physically attached to the RV, and guess what, there’s another deductible that comes into play there too!  When I ask why, the answer is “I don’t know, I’ll have to get back to you.”

Yesterday I called PoliSeek, who is supposed to be my advocate, as I understand it. I was told that nobody there could help me, and was transferred to the original claims adjuster at National Interstate. He told me that “these things take time.”

How much time? It is now twelve days after we were victimized and we still do not know if we are on the hook for the repairs to our RV or if we will be reimbursed for our loss and damages. The shop in Indiana wants paid and has told us that if the insurance company does not pay them in a timely manner for the repairs, we are responsible.

The same claims adjuster called back later yesterday afternoon and told me the claim can take up to 180 days to settle. Then he e-mailed me more paperwork to fill out, more loss claims to have notarized and mailed in, and said he will turn it over to a field adjuster, who is supposed to contact us “soon” to make an appointment to come and talk to us.  

You can bet that I’ll be changing insurance companies and agents very soon! Some readers who use PoliSeek and National Interstate have reported good experiences with them, but they have totally dropped the ball on our claim, in my opinion.

Thought For The Day – Friendship isn’t a big thing. It’s a million little things.

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