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Letter to the Editor
Wednesday July 23
Georgia Collision Industry Association Discusses Steering
The Georgia Collision Industry Association's (GCIA) main agenda topic at its recent July meeting was an open discussion on “steering” of collision repair customers. A panel of GCIA leaders, Tom Durden and Gene Hamilton as well as Georgia State Senator Tom Price, Republican from the 56th District, led the discussion.The purpose of the discussion was to determine if members are experiencing any illegal steering practices and to gather input from members on how best to address the issue from an association standpoint. The 60-plus members present brought up many related aspects of the issue, including the pros and cons of DRPs. The existing law governing steering in the state of Georgia was discussed and Senator Price pointed out that this law is very vague and ambiguous – in other words, it was written this way to make all sides happy but it lacks any real teeth.
There was a very lively and spirited discussion on the subject from both sides of the issue. It was finally suggested by several members that the association should research conducting an aggressive consumer education campaign to inform them of their insured motorists’ rights in the state of Georgia.
Howard Batchelor, Operations Manager of the GCIA, said, “You usually have only one opportunity to educate your customer about their right to choose a shop of their choice so each and every shop should use this opportunity to educate the customer. The GCIA is going to pull together the details on our campaign and we’ll bring this information back to the body at the next meeting in September.”
Batchelor passed out information about insured motorists’ rights in Georgia and this document is now available for download in PDF on the GCIA website. This information was obtained from the Society of Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS) in which GCIA is an affiliate member.
The GCIA is a statewide association dedicated to promoting professionalism and consumer awareness of the automotive collision repair industry in the state of Georgia.
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