What a wicked couple of weeks I must’ve been naughty in a former life or this one!
Danny de Hek

As many of you know I’m planning My Trip and I leave on Friday the 13th, unlucky date for some, as I’m heading to China, Bangladesh and coming home via New Delhi India. This intrepid journey is to celebrate my 50th. My main goal is to travel on top of a train in Bangladesh and take some awesome street photography, as well as a whole lot of video blogs for my TikTok account.

Shit happens and shit happened when my car was parked on the side of the road last week. A 17-year-old guy who wasn’t concentrating on his driving, was dropping off a customers vehicle after it had been serviced from Blackwells Mazda. He crashed into my vehicle and set off his airbags, he went on two wheels flying past the doctors surgery window. I ran out to see what had happened and if he was ok and noticed he had smashed into my car.

As you can imagine this wasn’t really something I needed to deal with just before Christmas, especially when I’m arranging my holiday. Everything went blurry and I didn’t really want to burden the young fella who made the mistake so when I had a moment to re-analyse the situation I started to assess what I needed to do.

With the advice I got from members of ELITE : SIX I was soon in a rental car/van at no cost. Did you realise if you’re involved in a not-at-fault accident you are legally entitled to a rental car and there is a company setup to handle all this for you, Right2Drive.

Next, I was instructed how the process works best to get my vehicle written off. The powers that be were telling me that it wouldn’t be written off because there’s too much money tied up in the new vehicle.

Mike from Ferrymead Automotive went the extra mile to turn down a $17,000 repair job to give me the result I wanted, an unselfish act of bravery for any business person!

Next minute the insurance company tells me that they going to settle for $24,500. However, the finance left on the vehicle was for $28,000, it was a bit of a hard pill to swallow. With the advice from my insurance company, who said they were batting for me, suggested if I didn’t agree on the figure, I could go back to the valuer and tell him I disagree with this valuation. The phone call went something like this, “Hi I’m Danny, you valued my car” he said “I value hundreds of cars, I’m not familiar with the vehicle you are talking about, put it in an email and I’ll answer it tomorrow” and he hangs up!

So I had the car valued in the morning, ironically the company I purchased from, who isn’t allowed to give a valuation because of a conflict-of-interest, said the vehicle would be worth $27,000 as it has 25,000 km’s on the clock. So I emailed the valuation guy with the receipt of payment for purchasing the vehicle and also the valuation that I got from Holland’s (the original dealer). Half an hour later I got a reply apologising that he had got the amount wrong and said we will now pay you $26,000 based on four other 2019 cars that were selling in New Zealand. Being Internet savvy, I found one of the vehicles for sale for $26,500 that had 13,000 km’s on the clock, it was a Japanese import, my one was New Zealand new, obviously not like for like.

As I was composing my email back to the valuer, the insurance company rings. “Hello this is State Insurance, my name is Anna, a few of the other girls and I have been reading your policy and did you know, because your car is less than 12 months old, you are entitled to a brand new car, including sign-writing and we will arrange it all and drop off a new car to your doorstep”.

Why didn’t they just say that at the start! Why aren’t insurance companies familiar with the policy? So basically I went from losing $7,000 on a vehicle that is 10 months old, to getting a brand-new vehicle with no km’s on the clock. All this within 2 hours!

Four or five people from within ELITE : SIX gave me good sound advice. We had many strategies to work with, even without the best result to fall back on, my point is being persistent pays off. Don’t take what people say lying down, fight for what you believe is right and in the New Year I will be taking people for quick laps around the block in my new car.

I have had a fantastic year in business and I hope that you have also done the same. I’m truly looking forward to coming back with a new mindset and believe having the support of my friends around me in business, has been paramount to being a successful year.

P.S. If you like this article, please click “like” or provide comment, as that will motivate me to publish more. Share and inspire. Thank you.