The conclusion

For the curious, here is the conclusion to our car accident saga.

One day a week or so after the accident, Mike called the insurance company just to follow-up and see how things stood (if they had received the police report yet, if they had reached a decision as to fault). They had no more information at that time, but did say that a man had called regarding the accident demanding to know when Geico was going to pay to fix his car. This man was not the perp, but as it turns out he was the owner of the car the perp was driving. It was never brought up until this point that the perp didn't own the car. The owner of the car was a relative of the perp, and told the Geico rep that he carried insurance through American Family. He didn't have his policy information available at the time, so he said he'd call the claims rep back later to give her his policy info. (Sound familiar?) Long story short, this guy was also lying about carrying insurance. What is with this family?

After the insurance company recieved the police report, they determined that the perp was at fault. Because both he and the owner of the car had no insurance, we would have to file a claim through our uninsured motorist coverage, which is subject to our deductible. We would have to pay the deductible if we chose to get the car repaired, and then Geico would get their hired thugs to get the money out of the perp to reimburse us. The damage on Mike's car is cosmetic, and we still have not decided whether or not it is worth fixing... especially with no guarantee that we'd get our deductible back (knowing the nature of the people involved and the neighborhood they live in, we have little optimism that collections could be successful-- you can't squeeze blood from a turnip).

Mike took the car to get the damage appraised at the insurance company's shop, and they assessed the damage and then just cut him a check right then and there for the value of the damage less our deductible. Which was still a pretty tidy sum! So now if we want to get it fixed we can just go for it, and let Geico know if we want them to go after the perp for our deductible.

So that's where things remain! We still are not sure what we want to do vis-a-vis repairs. But now with claim check in hand, Mike has visions of playstation 3 dancing through his head. My visions were more along the lines of a new washer and dryer when we move... but Mike reminded me, "hey! MY accident, MY car, MY money!" We'll see about that, honey. :-)