Day 60 Traffic Accident

Mysterious traffic circles
Not far from the marina is a “hyper market” called Carrefour. This is a French chain that took the U.S. supermarket concept and blew it out to a combination market and mall that is now found throughout France.
The Carrefour near the marina contains everything from groceries to pharmacy, bakery, hardware store, beauty shop, restaurants, doctor, electronics store, clothing, cars, gardening, plumbing and anything else that makes up a complete one stop shop.
The Carrefour is about a quarter of a mile from the marina and many people push the cart back but since we had the car until noon it seemed easier to drive over and stock up.
The marina exits onto a one-way road away from the Carrefour so it is necessary to go a half mile south to a roundabout in order to head North toward the market. I entered into the outside lane and put on my signal to indicate I was not going to exit when suddenly the car behind me in the inside lane decided to turn right. The impact was minor and his car was virtually undamaged due to the large rubber bumper. Our little Renault took the hit right at the end of the rear door and sustained quite a dent. The only good thing was that the driver spoke very good English and was very polite. We filled out all the forms and went on our way.
After shopping I went back to turn in the car and, of course, got into a discussion with the Avis agent. He insisted I pay a $550 deductible and I insisted that MasterCard insurance would cover the damage. Later I discovered that he was right. I pay up front and file a claim with MasterCard who reimburses me. The confrontation was not hostile and I knew if I did not agree they would charge my card anyway so now the ball is in my court to collect.
During the discussion I tried to call the number on the back of the card that says “call collect to...” To make a call from a pay phone in Tahiti requires a pre-paid phone card. Even though the electronic answering machine says “we accept collect calls” there is no way to make this happen and the phone card continues to be debited at about $3.00 per minute. It does not take long to eat up an $18 phone card with the time being spent answering electronic prompts and being on hold. At one point I walked over to the Air Tahiti counter and asked how I could call the operator to make a collect call. They told me that the telephone operators do not work on Sunday. While I find this hard to believe, I was not able to find a way to talk to an operator.
I guess the lesson is that for a one day rental, the Avis insurance may be worth it since it avoids the hassle of filing a claim to collect from MasterCard - particularly if you are not going to be home for a few months.