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no charges for dinged door

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Kokubunji, 2023.09.01

When we were in Hakone last weekend, a young couple was hanging around our car right after we arrived. The male half approached Mari and claimed that one of the children had knocked his car with her door, putting a ding in it. I don't know how he was supposed to know that (maybe he was lurking inside?) but we had a brief conversation and then parted ways, with Mari having given him her phone number. Throughout our brief visit, he contacted her a number of times, and informed her that his insurance people had told him that we'd have to speak to the police. We got this information as we were leaving, and of course the police told us they could help because we were no longer "at the scene".

before they approached us

I was clear that I wasn't paying for anything, given that a) none of us had any idea if this had happened and b) because the fellow was poorly parked and c) because my colleagues have been victim to these scams in the past. But in the end, the insurance people decided that it wouldn't be necessary to involve the police in a 4mm x 1mm ding that we may have caused, and that they'd deal with the other insurance company.

We didn't find this out until quite late on the day we got back, so it hung over us like a cloud the whole time. And we found out because one of the children had left her water bottle in the car. This required that I leave home at 21:00 to revisit the car in its parking spot, and retrieve the bottle. This required that Mari call them and keep me on the line (using our child's phone) while the company remotely unlocked their car. I found it remarkable that this was possible but I suppose it's all done with computers.

As for why I snapped the couple before they'd even spoken to us? Well, I'd observed them milling about the cars and knew something was up. I still believe it was likely a scam.

rand()m quote

Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.

—Norman Mailer