Damaged Goods and Dented Credit Cards

Disclaimer: BC Ferries and Camping and RV in BC sponsored our travels.

“Now’s the time,” I said to Walter, a positively bubbling 50 something man with a German accent, “when you tell me the worst you’ve seen.”

“You want the worst? The absolute worst? One time, I went to pick up a RV up in the Yukon and the entire side had been peeled away. The bathroom? It was completely gone. The whole thing was torn open. I had to tape up the sides. The guy I picked it up from said, “You have to DRIVE this back? GOOD LUCK!” This is when you look straight ahead, not to the right, not to the left, so you don’t see the people driving next to you shaking their heads and saying, “Stupid tourists!” What you’ve got here? This is nothing. Really. It’s nothing.”

You want to know what happened now, don’t you? First, I want to take a minute to say how unbelievably nice the staff at Fraserway RV are. The people at the desks, the guys who fussed with the blinkers and the smoke detector, the crew that checked us in, all of them, it’s like they screen for niceness when they hire. Every single person we dealt with there was a ray of sunshine, I kid you not, good natured, professional, and indulgent towards their customers. They floated seamlessly between languages (German, Dutch, English) and yes, they were that way with everyone, I watched for it. And faced with our situation, there was no joking, not even the slightest bit of annoyance. They’d been here before and knew exactly what to do — and took the time to express concern for our safety and peace of mind. They were great. If you’re heading to BC and want to do the RV thing — and the math works for you, I totally recommend them. [End promotional bit.]

Here’s what happened.

I was driving on Galiano Island. The roads are hilly, winding, narrow, tree lined, generally requiring a great deal of focus if you happen to be behind the wheel of a 32 foot RV. I was accelerating uphill on a narrow turn to the right and I got too close to the shoulder, scraping the lower right side of the rig but good on the dirt and a knobby bit of giant cedar tree. It made a perfectly awful noise, waking Peter out of his lazy afternoon reverie in the back bunk and causing Kelly and I to collectively blurt out some big oh-no-s. The result? A torn off a strip of molding, a bent lower sill, and a storage compartment door pushed in enough so that it wouldn’t open.There were some smashing scratches too, along the lower front side of the body panels.

We were, collectively, fine, though I felt, well, awful. Really awful, as you do when you damage your car, only worse, like you do when you damage someone else’s very expensive RV. This is why, back in the lot, I asked Walter to tell me the worst he’s seen. He meant it when he said my damage was nothing. He’d seen it all.

The ugly part was, of course, the price tag. But first, a bit of advice, again. If you’re going to rent an RV, pay for the extra insurance. Ours was 20 CDN a day, and it was worth every single nickel loonie. Everything over 500 dollars woth of damage is covered by the additional insurance and you’re off the hook for the rest. The RV lot keeps an estimator on staff, there’s also a full body shop so they crank out the repairs, my guess is that they have an impressive parts warehouse too. Were it my car, I’d have shopped around for another estimate, but no matter, it was clear that there was more than 500 dollars of damage done, so that’s what it cost. 500 dollars. Ouch. The total from the on site estimator? Just under 4000 dollars. Get the insurance. Just do it.

Our trip continued with no further incidents, though I didn’t take the wheel again for two — or was it three? — days. Right now I’m busy thinking up schemes that will restore that 500 dollars to my pained pockets. (I’m grateful for that new project that starts this week!)  I’m also trying to get out from under the shadow that the accident put over the rest of the trip. It hurt me to look at that damage every time I stepped outside. Yes, no one was hurt and yes, as Walter stated, it was nothing, but dropping a 500 tab on my Visa card to cover it didn’t really make me feel better, it made me feel worse.

Now, it’s all over but the cryin’, or the payin’ of the Visa bill rather. Though I will say this. The whole RV experience? VERY educational. I have so often wondered, while sitting at a picnic table in front of my little brown dome tent, what the RV experience is like. How does it work? What are the advantages? What’s that cost? Is it really the way to go? Is there a clever way for me to raise the money to recoop my losses?

For the answers to these questions and more, stay tuned!