The results from this year’sWho Pays for What? surveys, included with the December issue of INSIGHT, are now in. Using this data we have compiled payment frequencies for the 45 commonly non-included P-page operations that were covered in the survey.
Over 150 shops have reported their experiences on P-page reimbursement as of the writing of this article.
This year’s Who Pays for What? survey shows very little difference between reimbursement frequencies overall from the previous year. As the chart on page 12 details, the overall payment frequency rates by insurer varied no more than 2-3 percent above or below last year’s reported frequencies. It appears that shops and insurers have reached either agreement or an impasse regarding reimbursement rates.
Farmers retains the title of most agreeable insurer for the past four surveys. In previous years, we cited Farmer’s willingness to pay for many non-included items as leading towards higher customer satisfaction with their base of insureds.
To better gauge shops’ impression of the impact P-page reimbursements have on their customers, we added a question asking shops to rank insurers’ performance on a scale of 1 to 5, with one being poor and five being excellent. As expected, shops believe Farmers’ estimating methodology goes the furthest to satisfy customers and provide quality repairs. Fully 18.9 percent of shops responded by giving Farmers an excellent rating.
At the other end of the spectrum, Allstate has taken over the least favored spot among insurers receiving a poor rating from shops 19.3 percent of the time. Allstate also had the highest Never Pays frequency at 52.55 percent, up 1.55 percent from last year’s survey. GEICO followed closely behind Allstate with a Never Pays frequency of 50.63 percent in 1998, down from 52.59 percent in 1997’s survey.
The most commonly paid P-page items in the first 20 questions were Freon recovery and clean-up of broken glass, and flexible parts paint additives. These are all fairly common items that have received a lot of attention from the industry. Hence, the high level of Always pay remarks.
The least commonly paid items in the first twenty include removal of rust protective coating during repair, diagnostic time, frozen parts free-up time and abnormal test fitting of parts. Perhaps shops aren’t performing this service on a majority of their repairs.
In next month’s issue of INSIGHT we will detail the remaining P-page item payment frequency and provide charts comparing the relative frequency of payments over the past two survey periods. Also, we will highlight differences in how payments are made in differing markets across the country.
Have a comment? Send an E-mail to: rthrall@postoffice.ptd.net
Reprinted from the March 1998 Issue of Collision Repair Industry INSIGHT.
© 1998 Collision Repair Industry INSIGHT. All Rights Reserved
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