A downer

 

We have been looking around for an MPV for the best part of the year. The momentum took-off again recently and for the last couple of months, Puan Anita have been looking around for a deal. Initially I wanted an Estima but after browsing a few other alternatives, we considered the Mazda and SsangYong. Finally after a visit to a showroom and giving away our preference, one of the local dealer drove to our house an Estima that was just the right colour and spec. It was love at first sight.

The loan was sorted out. The car - being a reconditioned model, was being done nicely. All the paperwork as far as the authorities were concerned were completed, including a couple of afternoon trips to the back to sign documents. We were due to receive the delivery this afternoon in time for the long Deepavali weekend. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of letting one of our family friend handled the insurance policy. My God, he was fussy. I suspected that he was not happy that we looked for the car ourselves. We thought we involved him for the insurance as a courtesy as the dealer - who have been consistently excellent - have got a policy ready should we chose so. From the beginning, this family friend of ours have been harassing both my wife and the dealer. Everything came to a head yesterday when he insisted on a GPS tracker being installed. According to him, should the GPS tracker not installed, there will be no insurance.

The answer to that was simple. Either he gets it installed for us on his expense, or we just pick another policy instead. No brainer. He went on to abuse our dealer for not making sure that a GPS tracker was installed from the start, sounding as if it was the dealer’s fault and we were being tricked into buying the car from him in the first place! Sigh! So here we were. No MPV until next week.  Moral of the story, don’t do any business with a family friend if one can help it! And before you even think about it, both the dealer and the insurance guy are Chinese. It was not a race thing. Or so I thought!

Scope was clear

Now that the scope was done, Dad can have something to eat. His scope did not show any active bleeding. But the downside to that is we still don't know where the bleeding was from. Prof Chin wanted him to have a CT in the coming few days to make sure nothing was amiss.

Dad tolerated the scope very well since he was far from stable, we had an anaesthetist on stand by to administer medications to settle him for the procedure. It went without a hitch. Prof Goh was kind enough to loan us his new baby, a brand new scope for Prof Chin to use. With the new machine he was able to clip, laser, inject, microwave, make coffee etc while the scope was in the stomach.

As for Irfan, even though the order for discharge was given firstthing in the morning, Pantai had to conact the insurance company, Prudential to process the bill. By 3, when Anita asked the payment desk, it turned out that Prudential has not done anything with it. We even called our agent to find out what's goig on, and even she was surprised. No wonder some of my patients have been irate with Prudential as not only they were inefficient, they were fussy to release claims.

Only yesterday I told off one of the claims rep from Prudential for being too difficult with a patient's claim and asked me for explanation. I asked her to get a Medical personnel to speak to me rather than having to explain things because I'm sure there will be more confusion. Unfortunately I have too much invested in Irfan's fund thus far, plus it's not often that we claim from insurance.