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Letter to the Editor
This article originally appeared in the February, 2000 Issue of INSIGHT
Who Pays for What?
Our annual survey of P-page reimbursements shows major changes in payment patterns for the largest U.S. insurers...
The results of INSIGHT’s annual Who Pays for What? Surveys, included with the January issue, are in- and what a difference a year makes. Using the data from returns to the mailed and faxed surveys, we have compiled reported payment frequencies for 36 of the most common non-included procedure page (p-page) items.
Over 250 shops have returned this year’s survey as of the writing of this article.
Overall Satisfaction
While State Farm lost big in the courts in the highly publicized non-OE parts class-action suit in Illinois, the court of body shop opinion firmly views State Farm a winner. This year, State Farm gets INSIGHT’s nod as both Fair Player and Most Improved.
Last year we reported that State Farm was moving away from their long held policy, "We don’t pay for that, it’s included in your labor rate..." While the training on this change in policy had just been implemented at the time of last year’s survey, the results of this year’s survey show a dramatic improvement in the overall satisfaction of collision repair facilities with State Farm’s change in attitude.
(Editor’s Note: The charts accompanying this article begin on page 10.)
State Farm’s rating of 3.8, on a scale of 1 to 5, jumped 0.6 points from 3.2 in the past year. Last year’s 3.2 rating, the highest overall, was shared by Farmers, State Farm and USAA. Farmers improved their shop satisfaction rating from 3.2 in 1999 to 3.4 in 2000. Farmer’s ranking is still down from their high in 1998’s survey of 3.6.
USAA, it is interesting to note, has maintained a consistent 3.2 satisfaction rating in all three years the question has appeared in the survey.
Progressive, new to our survey this year, trailed other insurers significantly in reported shop satisfaction at 2.3, the lowest rating ever recorded during the three-years of the survey. It is important to note that Progressive’s new DRP recorded a respectable 3.56 rating in last month’s TrendLine Survey of Shop Satisfaction with DRPs. Clearly, a divergence exists between the company’s handling of preferred shops versus the rest of the shop population.
This result is contrary to the results achieved by State Farm, Farmers and USAA who, in addition to having the highest satisfaction results in the Who Pays for What? survey, also recorded high-overall satisfaction in the DRP study a month ago.
The most commonly reimbursed P-page items continue to be refrigerant recovery and clean-up of broken glass, followed closely by hazardous waste disposal and restoration of corrosion protection. These are all fairly common items which explains their on-going high payment frequency by insurers over the past several years.
Other P-page items like solid waste disposal, a common cost in urban area repair facilities, additional prep for non-OE parts, clean for delivery and battery disposal scored lowest in the Always Pay category- scoring in the low single digits in almost all cases.
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