ROUNDTABLE ROUNDUP

• Published in: Automotive Body Repair News 2011-08, Vol.50 (8), p.58
• Main Author: Yoswick, John
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aftermarket parts; Automobiles; Automotive repair services; Business conditions; Business government relations; Legislation; Recycling
• ISSN: 2166-0751; 2166-2533

* [Tom Elder]: Tm sorry but I'll say it: The insurance side doesn't care about quality. They don't have any standards for fixing a car. It's just: Fix the car, use these parts and get done with it. The insurance carriers are reducing the standard by saying, "That's what the policy pays for." It's real tough for me because I want to repair the Chevys, Fords and Toyotas that came into our store to the same standard that we do for Mercedes-Benz, BMW or highline cars. But I'm finding in my market a lot of shops are just saying, "That's all the insurance company pays for." [Aaron Schulenburg]: Yes and no. To me a "generic repair" would be one that doesn't follow OEM recommendations, and I disagree wholeheartedly that insurers aren't asking for that. Is it policy to do that? I don't know. Does it happen? Every single day. Top 10 carriers say, "I don't care what the OEMs say; we believe it should be done this way," or "This is the way that we're paying for it to be done." Until both sides equally admit that the OEM recommendation, where it exists, is the standard, and agree to find good solutions where the OEM recommendations don't exist, I think we're going to continue to have this argument and this battle. Schulenburg: I hear those examples, [Dan Risley], but one of our members last week had a 2010 pick-up, hit in the rear. The Top 10 carrier, despite documentation from the OEM that said that the frame needs to be replaced once damage is past a certain point, said they wanted the shop to section in the rear-half of a used frame and, "if you aren't willing to do it, we have two other shops that will." Trust me when I say there's a problem that the other shops are willing to do that. But there's also a problem for the shops willing to perform to a standard if the insurer is not willing to reimburse to the standard. A voluntary standard has shops nervous. If I'm a shop investing and doing what's necessary to meet that standard, but I have carriers pushing work away from my business because the standard costs more, that's not beneficial for the repair industry, and it's certainly not beneficial for the consumer. * Risley: We're restricted in just about every state as to what we can and can't say, especially if the customer already has a shop in mind. The complaints we get are if someone has a poor experience outside of the network, and later finds out we had a network we didn't tell them about. That's not to say steering doesn't exist within the industry. Otherwise