It was around 10-10:15 in the morning on March 6th. We both were on our way to office. Our new car (read the review at http://re-view-central.blogspot.com/), which is just about a month was due its first service the next day. While we were on Jeevan Bhima Nagar main road, on which you can never think about speeding in any way, one of the drivers in the front hit the brakes. We also stopped and after a split second, we hit a thud at the back. We were not thrown in the front when we stopped, but we did when we were hit. Now, as many of us would have guessed, it was a Accenture call centre vehicle(vehicle number KA-07 1280) which banged on us.











Then it all started.. Iit is a new car - just over a month old and was bought after so much of research, discussions and planning, anything that happens to it gets into you emotionally. My husband was boiling and when the driver asked him a question 'Sir Ji, Aap ne brake kyon lagaye?(Sir, why did you hit the brakes?) he would have almost hit him. Damage was on three panels - the bumper and indicator was gone and the left side panel and boot had dents. We spoke to the vehicle owner and Accenture travel desk. The owner came and said that he will take it to his brothers garage at Ulsoor and get it repaired.. We told him that cannot happen as this is a new car and took him to a garage in Gitanjali layout just to estimate the damage. They estimated around 18K. Owner was still telling us that he will take it to his brothers garage. We took him to Ford service center as we had to enquire about the procedure to claim insurance, there again the damage was estimated as around 22K. After that, we were trying to negotiate with the owner, but that guy, named Saddiq Sharif (attached his photo - does he really look like the owner ?? I wonder!) just was not stating anything. Then we called up Accenture travel desk and spoke to a person named Mohammed, who actually told us that the solution is to just take it

to the garage specified by Saddiq. I was really wild as am sure if it had been his car for which he paid 8.5 lacs and had not run for even 1000Kms, he would not make that statement. Finally we decided that we will go to police and file a case. While we were waiting for a person who worked in traffic police, but now working in a security agency, come and take us to the police station to help us talk to people there as we did not know the local language, Saddiq and his driver suddenly vanished from the scene. When we reached the station, these people were already there negotiating with the police guys.

We spent almost 2-2.5 hours there, trying to get some decent compensation from these guys as we will be spending on the fibre parts and also will be loosing our No Claim Bonus for the coming years if we claim insurance. Saddiq was adamant that he will not pay anything at all, then said that the maximum he can pay is 3500 Rs. His logic was very simple - if we file a case, that is the maximum expense for him and so he was willing to shell out that much of money. If we do file a case, it seems that we will get our money only after a couple of years. And also that we need to go to the court everytime summon comes and spend on a lawyer. He just has to plead guilty appear a couple of times and leave the rest to the insurance company.. Intially we thought that we should file a case, but at the end, agreed to the settlement.

On the whole, loss in several form - we had to spend a whole day out of office, my BIL and brother had to come out of office to do their bit of negotiation, pay for what insurance will not cover, loose the NCB and whole a lot of emotional pain - was for us and just 3.5K for the guys who did the damage :(