Nibbled News

Cancelling coverage too early costs motorist

"As I approached the intersection, a stop sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident."  

 When it comes to having adequate insurance coverage to protect our home, auto, life and family we all want the best plans that money can buy but at a reasonable cost.

Admittedly, we are all bargain hunters when it comes to this subject consistently demanding the most amount of coverage possible for the least amount of money.

Many folks accept this as a cost of modern life. Other people only weigh in the monthly cost of coverage and do not view the long term effect of prematurely cancelling their overall automobile insurance coverage. Acting hastily and cancelling some types of insurance could seriously jeopardize a person's financial situation.

My own insurance agent the other day told me about one of his long-standing customers cancelling his auto collision insurance. The vehicle was twelve years old and the guy involved wanted to reduce some of his monthly insurance costs. He felt he was a careful driver and did not want to continue to spend good money protecting an older vehicle.

The agent tried desperately to dissuade him from taking this course of action by offering him a number of less costly insurance alternatives. He outlined the costs involved if the man was involved in an accident. The man listened with a deaf ear. He was determined to take the collision coverage off this vehicle. 

The agent reluctantly cancelled the man's collision coverage and gave him his business card in case he wanted to change his mind. He signed the appropriate release forms for the agent. The client thanked him for his assistance and then left the office.

Ten minutes later the agent's telephone rang. The client whose collision insurance he had previously cancelled was calling him to report that he was involved in an accident just outside the insurance office's parking lot. The man was distraught and frantic. He asked the agent if he could help him.

The agent tried to explain to him that there was nothing he could do to assist him. He suggested the man call the police and report the accident. The driver had willingly declined the collision insurance coverage and was not covered . The car was substantially damaged and the cost to repair it would have to come from out-of-pocket finances.

Both drivers were not injured in the accident. The other driver was going to visit his own insurance agent to upgrade his own collision coverage when the accident happened. It was just one of those ironies of life . It happens.

The moral of the story: before you start lopping off monthly insurance costs make sure you have weighed all the pros and the cons. Sometimes a penny saved in one area can end up costing you big bucks in another. Try to think things through and get the big picture before you act.

Crafty Lawyer Burnt For False Arson Claim

 "I'm glad to see you're not letting your education get in the way of your ignorance."  ---   Anon.

 

Sometimes a person may be too smart for their own good. The following real life situation took place in Charlotte North Carolina and has been labelled as being the "best lawyer/insurance story of the year, decade and possibly the century". 

An allegedly shrewd and experienced lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars, then  insured them against , among other things, loss due to fire.

Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company. In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost 'in a series of small fires".

The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason, that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The lawyer sued and won.

 

Delivering his ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. The judge stated nevertheless, that the lawyer held a policy from the company, in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable 'fire' and was obligated to pay the claim.

 

Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the cigars that perished in the 'fires'.

 

NOW FOR THE BEST PART...

After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 individual counts of arson.

 

With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.

This true story won first place in last year's Criminal Lawyers' Award Contest.

 

Give Up My Password To My Boss -- No Way!

"A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy." --Edward P. Morgan

 Many folks who maintain social networking sites are being asked by their bosses to supply them with their personal password so that their online activity can be monitored for potential security and breach of corporate protocol  concerns.

While they privately make light of the fact that this demand is an invasion of their privacy and personal space a great many employees begrudgingly provide their demanding employers with the requested password to their Facebook account.

Suddenly their perfect job has become tainted by the fact that they must unwillingly relinquish their guarded password to their boss. The economics of the situation persuades many of these employees to succumb to the demand of the job and of course their continuing employment.

Julie is one such employee who has been a marketing researcher for the past five years. She works in an office environment and communicates with clients via her Facebook site. She manages her site when she is at work and states that she uses it for business promotions, conferencing and client updating.

She realizes that her employer is providing the net connection for her to use and as such has the right to ask her for her password. She resents the fact that a condition of her continuing employment with the firm rests on her compliance with the password ruling.

Concerned friends and colleagues advise her to comply but also suggest that she either create a new Facebook account for her own private use or else change the password a month after she reveals it to her employer.

A number of people I chatted with resented the outright imposition on their privacy. They stated that their employer really had no right to invade in their private space especially if their private thoughts and concerns revealed online were not related to their jobs.

Doug, a radio DJ , said "no way Jose!" would he ever comply with such a demand by his employer. His connection to his listeners was enhanced by his Facebook persona and he emphasized the fact that his listeners might not communicate as freely with him if they suspected third or even fourth parties were monitoring them.

Facebook does provide a forum for many folks to not only express their views to the world but also at times an ideal meeting place to meet new friends, business associates and reconnect family members separated by great distances.

It also offers unscrupulous employers the opportunity to not only intimidate their employees with termination but also a private view into the non business lives of their personnel. 

 It may be wise and economically prudent to maintain two such social media accounts: one to appease the demands of your boss and a second , more private one in which your non work related personality and networking connections are private and secure from your company's probing eyes.

Shoddy Tech Support Plagues Giantmatrix

 

Online software companies promise potential customers that their product is second to none and that their product 's technical support team will go out of its way to assist you should you experience problems with their products.

One company whose after sale technical support is sorely lacking is Giantmatrix (www.giantmatrix.com) whose product "Anti Tracks" offers consumers hours of software frustration, little or no product support and of course questionable marketing strategies.

In November of 2011 I purchased an  online version of Anti Tracks from Avangate the seller of the software. I received an email notification that once my order was confirmed I would receive the payment receipt and "detailed product licensing information" in separate emails.

The followup email I received informed me that I should register my product at the Avangate website (www.avangate.com) so that I would be able to view my order details, gain access to my online shopping history and "re-download licence keys/codes".

An email indicated the download site to obtain the program. No product codes were ever included with the emails. At the time I thought nothing of that fact and installed the program. That was my first major mistake.

The program loaded successfully and promised to protect my identity and personal information online. After I initiated the program two things happened which I did not expect:

1.  I was unable to access any website due to server failure.
2.  My computer crashed and I had to do a computer restore.

I had to perform a computer restore two more times after the initial software conflict. I had downloaded a copy of the program and placed it on a DVD for safekeeping. When I installed this copy the computer once again locked up. An onscreen error message informed me of an error occurring because a product cover page was missing.

I sent an email to the customer support team and told them my situation. I also told them that I had not received the licence keys or special codes in any email from them. I requested the product codes to unlock the product.

I received a short email telling me to go to another website and download another version of the program. No product codes were included at this time but the name of the program was listed a "Anti Tracks - complete version". I still do not know what that means.

Naively I followed their instruction, downloaded the program and hoped for the best. Again my web browsers were unable to access the Internet due to server errors. Two more times the program crashed my computer due to software complications.

I again contacted customer support and have  been waiting now for a reply for about two weeks. Apparently a customer has to purchase "download protection" from the company to avoid such frustrating situations. A reputable company should have to resort to this type of after sale customer extortion to ensure that their product will continue to function as promised.

 In the past week or so I wrote to the sales department at Avangate asking for a refund for the product. I also sent an email to Gianmatrix explaining my frustration with both their problem plagued product and shoddy technical support.

From this experience I have learned not to trust an online software company who requests that a customer purchase "download insurance portection" to guarantee them the right to have future downloads should their product fail to perform. 

This is definitely a situation of buyer beware. The best policy is to do your online research about those companies who toot their own product horns a little too briskly. 

Invent A Patch To Save Some Marriages

If you made a list of the reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a hell of a lot of overlapping.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

This is an impassioned plea trying  to keep lawyers and divorce court costs out of the bedrooms and bank accounts of America.

Many marital conflicts are at times the result of conflicting emotional feelings and sentiments of confused and disgruntled couples and as such do not come under the direct purview of the judicial system. 

The time has finally arrived  for an enlightened populace to allow the  creative scientific community the opportunity to process and perfect a hormonal patch that disputing married couples can jointly use to save themselves from divorce and get their marriage back on track.

Scientific inventiveness , genius and creativity over innumerable decades has consistenly attempted to help man enjoy a carefree and productive lifestyle. The problems of female infertility, male erectile dysfunction, persistent indigestion and occasional bouts of embarassing flatulence have all been successfully handled.

If the problems listed above are hormone related then who is to say that emotional situations and tensions that eventually do arise between the most loving , compatible and closest of couples could not benefit from such a quick and inexpensive fix.

I appreciate the fact that many talented and well-known divorce court attorneys make their six figure salaries helping grieving spouses rectify an intolerable marital situation. Their efforts to comfort their clients is well documented and costly at the best of times.

The disputing couple would now make an appointment with a marriage counsellor who would take a proactive approach and recommend not only couple's therapy but also the marriage patch in the hopes of not only rectifying their current marital strife but also stave off the possibility of enlisting the services of a good family lawyer.

Members of the legal association, fearing loss of a substantial amount of income, would probably launch state by state class action lawsuits aimed at determing  the legality and the overall safety aspects of using the patch. Many lawyers do tend to get overly emotional and protective when their  lifestyles are threatened.

Human beings are ever changing vessels of emotions, sentiments and feelings. A patch designed to specifically help regulate or temporarily modify a couple's conflicting emotional levels would be a lot less costly and more effective than filing for a divorce and upsetting a couple's lifestyle and financial situation .

Jurisprudence can only go so far in affecting the way members of a society relate to one another as far as the law is concerned. Perhaps it's time that science lends a helping hand to couples trying to cope with the pressures and strifes of modern life.

Sorry Buddy, Your Dog Can't Drive The Car

" I used to look at (my dog) Smokey and think, 'If you were a little smarter, you could tell me what you were thinking', and he'd look at me like he was saying, 'If you were a little smarter, I wouldn't have to.'" --- Fred Jungclaus

Imagine this situation. You are sitting at a red light waiting  to make a left hand turn. It is an unusually warm summer day.

The cooling beads of sweat are playfully and slowly trickling down the back of your neck. Your shirt has absorbed about as much moisture as the high priced paper towel might have done.

You have waited your turn  patiently in the sweltering sun for what to you seems like an eternity. The traffic light finally turns green and you begin to execute your left turn.

The oncoming lane of vehicles is light for this time of the day. You casually glance over your right shoulder towards the curb lane to check for any oncoming traffic. There are no pedestrians or other vehicles impeding your making the turn.

At that moment you notice that the operator of the vehicle beside you in the non turning lane is not a human being afterall but rather a large, shaggy headed bouvier with its left paw hanging freely outside the driver's side of the curb laned vehicle while its tongue hangs freely from its drooling mouth.

You do a visual double take hoping that you are not suffering from some form of temporary dementia or weather induced heat stroke. As that vehicle continues onward past your own vehicle you notice that a hand now tugs on the dog's leash and yanks it towards the passenger side of the car.

To you it seemed that the frisky but very large puppy had jumped up on the driver's lap, blocked his field of vision and commanded the driver's side of the car while it had stopped for the red light.

This incident could have proven fatal if the dog decided to leap onto its master's lap while the vehicle was moving. Fortunately no one was injured.  I'm certain the driver of the car did not learn to be a more careful driver from the experience.

The warmer summer conditions cause many people to abandon their usually dependable common sense notions. People want to bond closer with their animals and fail to accept the fact the an unharnessed animal bounding freely in the front seat of their cars could lead to traffic fatalities, injuries and possibly death.

One driver with a Ford sport utility vehicle  had two  large doberman roaming freely and unfettered inside the passenger compartment of the vehicle. The windows of the SUV were opened and when the vehicle stopped at a red light one of the dogs leapt through the window. 

 The large dog  immediately  proceeded  to attack a female pedestrian who was out and about walking her poodle. The driver managed to finally safely stop his vehicle and restrain the attacking dog before any serious injury could occur to either the pedestrian or the smaller , startled animal.

If the dogs in the above situations were chihuahua sized then the matter would have been both amusing and entertaining. In these instances however the size and weight of the dogs created a potential physical threat to both fellow motorists and innocent pedestrians in the immediate vicinity.

Dogs, large or small,  should be outfitted with some type of physical restraint mechanism which would effectively limit their range of movement in a moving vehicle. This type of restraint apparatus should be given the same status that a child restraint seat has for youngsters who travel in the family vehicle with their parents.

Drivers who allow their pets to roam freely inside their vehicles should be fined as heavily as those parents who do not ensure their infants are properly strapped into their special infant seats. They should also receive demerit points for not driving in a responsible and safe manner.

Children and four legged animals obviously do not fall  within the same category of passenger safety. But the amount of physical damage that a wildly careening , 90 pound, out of control animal can produce during an auto accident warrants that some type of physically restraining harness or travel case be used to safely transport the animal from one destination point to another.

Letting your family pet roam freely in the back of your pickup truck is not a responsible way to show you care for man's best friend. Small children and animals depend upon adults to provide due care, caution and concern for their safety and well being.

To provide less than the best care for them should be considered criminal. Monetary fines and demerit points might help to educate those folks who publicly ignore their responsibilities.

Judge Judy: Legal Arbitrator or Mere TV Ham?

"The people are real. The cases are real. The rulings are final. This is Judge Judy." TV introduction

Judith Scheindlin, television's much celebrated and charismatic television female judge, reputedly dispenses her brand of legal bread-and-butter justice in a no holds barred, no nonsense  manner.

Judge Judy, touted as being the new Queen of television, the unofficial celebratory female destined to replace the gap created when Oprah Winfrey finally retires, is expected to capture a substantial market share of Oprah's viewing audience.

She is described as being a lawyer, judge, television personality, legal arbitrator and author. But one wonders if her daily dealings with low lifes, dishonest and conniving plaintiffs and defendants has turned her into an egotistical TV ham  with a legal chip on her shoulder.

In many cases she loathes having her non judicial opinions questioned. She has effectively managed to convert herself into another television personality desperate to impress, enthuse and at times infuriate her at home viewers.

She frequently admonishes her plaintiffs and defendants that in her court it's her way or the highway. She has become a female version of the Old West's Judge Roy bean....brash, unbiased and fair minded.

This feisty female from Brooklyn New York exhibits the charm , savvy and street smarts that a judge with her many years of legal and courtroom experience would be expected to have honed and acquired.

At times however she tends to over emote her disgust and contempt for those standing before her bench trying to manipulate her way of thinking and ply her to their way of thinking.

Recently  in a number of her court room episodes she warned a number of plaintiffs that she did not have time to listen to their petty gibberish and juvenile complaints. "I don't have time for this nonsense" she blurted out in an angry tone of voice.

This makes me wonder if she would rather be somewhere else maybe polishing rocks in a lapidary shop and not dispensing justice and court rulings.

She sometimes injects her own moral codes and standards into the cases she adjudicates. One woman with three children and two fathers for her children was publicly chastised before her tv audience for being an unfit mother and not too responsible .

Should she not stick with the facts of the case being presented before her and not attempt to inject her own moral codes and standards into every case she tries?

The other TV judges employ this same brand of real life angst and anger in their court cases. The in studio audience definitely is entertained and chuckles at the absolute stupidity of their fellow man.

Lady Justice is no longer blind nor impartial when  judges on the bench must keep one eye on the law books and another on the ratings their weekly episodes generate. So much for the impartiality and fairness of the judicial system -- at least the syndicated tv version of the law.