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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.

For the first time ever, INSIGHT is unable to present our annual Fair Player Award! Shops’ satisfaction level with State Farm dropped ten percentage points from its 2007 score to 73 percent, its lowest CSI rating since INSIGHT began the survey. Progressive’s score this year of 34 percent is a record low for the survey. The “Never” pay percentages are up across the board for the seven major insurers included in our survey.

More than ever before, 2008 is clearly the year when collision repair facility owners and managers must decide for themselves how much they need to charge for each and every vehicle, and determine for their shops what needs to change about the way they do business - in order to afford to stay in business.

The CIC meeting update from Palm Springs, on page 17, is a must-read for business owners who long for the implementation of industry standards. If tough economic times are here into the near future, as we are being told, and insurers are getting tougher about what they are willing to pay for vehicle repairs, then it makes sense to protect quality, well-run, state-of-the-art operations from closing their doors. Shops that give our industry a bad name with shoddy repairs done by unqualified technicians without the proper equipment should shut down.

Looks like Mother Nature has sent a nice cold, white Valentine to collision repairers across the nation! Keep busy!

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