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Letter to the Editor

No Insurer Valentines This Year

Our annual Who Pays for What? survey results are here this month in INSIGHT’s feature article and charts. The charts indicating the “Always,” “Sometimes,” and “Never” pay habits of your insurer partners should be studied carefully by all our collision repair facility owners and managers. The bottom line for many body shops is that if you must perform a repair operation to properly complete a repair, then you must be paid for the operation fairly. In many other service and industrial establishments this statement is a logical given.

As many readers know, I am the computer nerd in our office. I have been studying the percentages shown for each insurer and for each P-Page item for days now and have been busily constructing tables and charts for the data we have collected since 1997. Look for a sampling of these analyses in the March issue.

Legal actions are definitely in the forefront in the aftermarket parts arena. MQVP has sued Keystone Automotive Industries (See page 6.) for possible mis-use of the MQVP parts stickers. Keystone plans to defend itself vigorously in this matter, and to pursue an appeal of last month’s judicial settlement in favor of Ford’s patented OEM parts.

Do not miss the news on page 3, about the new Database Enhancement Gateway (DEG), a project begun jointly by the Alliance of Automotive Service Professionals (AASP), the Automotive Service Association (ASA), and the Society of Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS). These three key industry associations have teamed up to examine and enhance the content of the data found in the industry's leading estimating systems.

Well, Winter has arrived all over the U.S. in January, dropping snow and ice in Alaska and along the Great Lakes, of course, but even in Tuscon and Malibu. A Valentine from Mother Nature to collision repairers across the nation!

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