Surprising outcome

So a couple months ago my mom was involved in a minor accident which could have been major one. A guy driving some sort of delivery truck changed lanes abruptly and did not see my mom was in the space he was moving into.  One of the rear truck tires clipped the front corner of mom’s Rav 4.  The collision dislodged the top corner of her bumper and left some surface damage on her front fender and trim piece.

They both pulled over and looked at the vehicle.  The truck driver, a Hispanic man, begged my mom to not report the accident officially, he said it would cause problems for him at work.  He said he would pay for any damage.  Well mom fell for his sob story, something I would have advised her against if she would have contacted me when it happened.

I was able to get mom’s bumper back in place so it at least didn’t look damaged.  She said she was going to get an estimate from a body shop to have the vehicle correctly repaired.  There was some issue with the estimate and mom later said she would simply accept $200 from the driver for the incident, again, cutting the guy an undeserved break. The driver agreed to send mom a $200 check.

Well weeks passed  by and no check arrived.  Mom sent a letter to the guy and got a call back with renewed promises of sending the check.

More time passed, enough that mom finally agreed to take me up on my offer of my calling the guy to rattle his chains a bit about the money.  I called him last Friday, “Michael’s” accent made it a bit tough for me to communicate with him.  When I first described who I was, the son of the woman he hit with his truck a couple month’s ago, he acted like he had no idea what I was talking about.

I continued my description, reminding him how he agreed to send a check to my mom for the incident.  Suddenly he remembered what I was talking about.  Not only did he remember, he said he had just sent the check earlier in the week.  Of course my years of dealing with human beings made me immediately cynical of what he was saying.  I told him if mom didn’t see the check within a few days I would be contacting him again.  He assured me the check is in the mail.

I hung up, pretty much positive that Michael was feeding me a load of horseshit.  I was sure he didn’t send a check and was just buying time, possibly hoping I would just give up eventually which I had no plans to do.  In fact today I was planning my follow up call to the guy where I was going to threaten to notify his employer and the sheriff’s office about the incident.

Well imagine my surprise when mom emailed me and said the check was actually in the mail.  I am so conditioned to individuals and businesses not following through that I assume that they won’t.  It was nice to be wrong this time around.