Stolen Ducs – Another Update

So here’s the latest and greatest with the stolen bikes. The adjuster for State Farm seems to have finally taken an interest in MotorMilt & me. He’s “dealing with the two cases” this week. Tells us that he’s working hard to try and get us our money bike minus a mileage depreciation fee, which he estimates at something like 10¢ per mile. Since we had just had the 600 mile service, SF seems cool with using Del Amo Motorsports invoice as proof of mileage so that doesn’t seem to be such an issue.

So all in all SF seems to be moving forward… Until,

Tuesday night Milt & I get back from a long day of shooting for work and find two angry message on our answering machine from the tow yard where my bike carcass has been stored in West Covina. Seems that SF never went to pick it up and they’ve incurred over $2k in towing and storage fees. (As an aside, currently my bike is a frame and part of an engine, how much space does that take up to store? It’s not like it’s an 18 wheeler that was impounded)

Next day, we go to the office first thing and call the tow yard. They had left two more pissy messages at work so it seemed like a good idea. Well as it turns out it wasn’t such a good idea because they then assume that we’re taking responsibility for the bike and want to charge us the money. Milt tells them it’s SF’s deal. We handed over the keys, signed their claims form, it’s their deal. Final tow yard agrees.

So Milt calls the claims adjuster from SF, tells him about the tow yard. John the claims adjuster is shocked. Can’t believe that SF has had this frame sitting there for beyond three weeks. He calls the tow yard and then calls us back to say that I need to go, in person, to West Covina PD to sign an impound release form so that the tow yard can hand the bike over to SF. Now West Covina is like 38 miles away according to mapquest. I tell John that ‘I’m working, I’ve got a ten day shoot starting, I don’t have time to haul all the way out to West Covina to get this form’

Ask him if WCPD can fax it. No, Have to do this in person. John then says to me, “if you don’t ‘help me out’ here today Dylan, the storage fees will be your responsibility starting tomorrow”…

I call WCPD myself, ask them if they can fax it. They say no.

So I haul my rear end out to West Covina to get this form. Come back, fax it to both John & the tow yard. Ask them both to confirm the receipt of the fax. Neither one calls me back.

Now forgive me here, but this self induced crisis by SF because they’ve been slow dealing with this and now I’m the one who has to run around to sort it out? What would have happened if the bikes showed up in Central Cal? Or NorCal? Are we as consumers supposed to just stop what we’re doing to get a fricken form?