More than 15 minutes and it save me nothing

Their ads proclaimed that a 15-minute phone call could save me up to $200 on insurance costs. We had just received our six months insurance bill which for the first time had four vehicles and four drivers.
At 8 p.m. Friday I decided to make that 15-minute call.
First, they wanted to know how much we were already paying. As I told them I figured once they know that, they can guarantee their estimate is $200 less. Then the questions began.
“What is the VIN for the first car?” I read it off to her.
“That would be a 1993 Dodge Caravan,” she murmured, “How many miles does it have?’
“About 235,000 miles.”
“How far is it to work?”
“About seven miles in and seven back.”
“How many miles are put on it yearly?”
“About 35-40,000.”
A shocked silence followed before she asked, “How do you get that many miles n a year?”
“We have relatives in New York, Indiana and New Orleans. We drive to visit them all.” I was put on hold.
At 8:08 she came back on the line. “I guess that will be OK. What is the principal driver’s birth date, when did they get their first driver’s license?”
I started to tell her I had three beginner’s permits the year I was 16. One for each state I lived in that year: New York, Arizona and Utah. I took driver’s training in two states and had a couple of road tests, before I was licensed in Utah at 17. I just told her I was 17.
By 8:12 we still had three more cars and drivers to cover.
They didn’t like the indefiniteness of our last college graduate’s life. After a summer job near St. Louis, I said he might come home, he might find a job in St. Louis. We had only had his car since January so I had not idea how many miles a year he drove.
At 8:22 the VIN for the 1985 Honda wagon brought only one question, “what year is that?”
At 8:25 I acknowledge that my daughter drove our sedan all summer, but I promised she was only taking a good pair of walking shoes to college this fall.
By 8:30 I was confessing to an insurance company that our mini-van was stolen and abandoned this spring with only the locks damaged. And yes, we actually had had speeding ticket in the past three years, but we had taken classes to nullify most of them.
After my confession there was this ominous silence as the clerk conferred with her supervisor.
At 8:35 she asked how old my daughter was when she got her first driver’s license.
“She was 14.” A significant silence once again fell, I hastily explained, “course she couldn’t drive by herself until she was 16, but she had her photo ID license at 14.”
Finally at 8:40 the clerk was satisfied and decided to compute how much their insurance would cost us.
The number crunchers took until 8:44 to determine it would cost us $200 more than we were already paying to insure them.
“Would you like to pay for that in one or two installments?”
At 8:45 I told her I would not pay $200 more for insurance than I already was paying.
We used the $200 we saved to put toward my daughter’s college education.


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