Ted's Polish-Mexican Page

A few weeks ago, I recieved a letter from the City of Tucson claiming that I had hit a fire hydrant, and that I am supposed to pay for the damage. The only trouble was, I never hit the fire hydrant. The letter gave me a phone number and it said "feel free to call if you have any questions." They were not actually serious about this. The woman I talked to was rude. At one point, she even told me "sir, we have pictures." I said, "You have a picture of my car hitting a fire hydrant?" "Don't be ridiculous," she snottily told me.

So, I did some checking and I also called my insurance company. Apparently, the officer saw damage to a fire hydrant and a hubcap. He looked around for a car with a missing hubcap, and saw my car. I have some damage on that side, but it's from a previous incident. In fact, the scratches from that are full of beige paint. I've never seen a beige fire hydrant. The investigator claimed to have followed a "trail of debris" to my car, parked some blocks away. Debris? So, pieces were falling off of my car and I can still drive it?

Anyhow, the insurance company took some measurements, realized that the charge was BS, and called the city to say they were not going to pay the claim. After the insurance investigator called Risk Management, they said that their invesigator made mistakes, and they were dropping the claim.

I'm not going to claim that I was somehow traumatized by this incident. It just bugged me a bit, especially the way that I was spoken to when I called Risk Management. The insurance guy was really suprised at how bad the investigation was. He thought it was unsual that no note was left on my car, and that there was no attempt to contact me until I got the letter a month after the incident allegedly occurred. There supposedly was a picture of the hubcap they had found. We thought it would be interesting to see whether or not the hubcap was actually for a Volkswagen (It would have a big "VW" on it). The unfortunate thing about them backing down so quick was that I was unable to see these pictures and find out just how shoddy the investigation was.