Had a Wreck called your claim in, what's next?

It sounds great when you hear the claims handler read their script to you, well rehearsed and practiced. "We have several shops in your area". They could be called Blue Ribbon or Select Service or a dozen other names. But you live 15 miles from the shop they have on their "list". Why would they want you to use a specific shop and have you drive 15 miles out of your way to use an auto body shop? They tell you it is because this shop meets a certain criteria or if you use another shop the Insurer will not guarantee the work, or it will take longer to get your car inspected, or you can get a rental car right away if you use their shop. All of these statements are used to control you and your claim. Why?

Insurance companies have collected your premiums for years for your policy, hopefully they invested the money wisely and made some great returns on the money you loaned them in the event you had an accident and had a claim against your policy. Truth is if they control you and your claim they may be able to save hundreds and maybe thousands of dollars on your repairs. How does this happen you say?

By controlling the shop that does your repairs, they are feeding them work and in turn the shop will either not perform certain procedures, shortcut the repairs, use the cheapest materials available or basically not perform procedures necessary to restore your vehicle to the condition it was in prior to the accident.

If you can imagine that insurers saving just $100.00 a claim and they write 2,000 claims a day across the United States. this would save $200,000 a day. Now I can assure you from what I have witnessed it is a lot more than $100.00 per car they save by this "company policy". Personally I don't want my Insurance rates to go up, however I feel like if they took better care of their customers they would not have to spend 50 million dollars to create characters like flow and mayhem.

Does any of this benefit you? Well maybe if you think that helping the production companies that make the commercials stay in business or helping all the TV channels fill spots for commercials. I personally think that this practice is a waste of our investment in the Insurance companies coffers.

Because in most states insurance is mandated to at least have liability insurance and if your vehicle is financed you have to maintain full coverage insurance till the vehicle is paid off. This in itself causes me to dislike the practices of shortchanging the motoring public. Because I have to deal with the policies they create at ground level, I wanted to shed a little light on the process consumers miss.

So my main point here is not to vent but to tell all of you if you have a shop that you know and trust that fixed Grandmas car and did a great job, don't be scared to use them if you need your car fixed. The repaired vehicles I have inspected that come from the direct repair shops have all been horrible. Rust, bent chassis's, Tia-won parts, peeling paint, poor fitting parts, poor welds and the list goes on! None of this helps you or your car. Your car is one of the largest investments you will make besides your home, having it lose it's value or become unsafe in another accident is not why I got involved in this business.

I have been involved with collision repair for over 35 years. If you do a little research you will find that I have been a number one Auto Body Technician most of my career. I am certified by the largest entities in the collision repair industry and currently teach auto body repair at a local community college. I own a Body Shop at a Chevrolet dealership in a small town in NC. I opened this shop to offer the community quality auto body repair at a fair price. Not to be told by an Insurer how not to fix a car properly or shortchange a customer. As long as I am able I will fight for my customers to get what they paid for. If they want to save money on their claim that is their right and no-one else's.

A Non Insurance Auto Body Repair Shop

Loss in Value in NC