Help Your Customers Get Reimbursed for Their Claims

Customers entering a body shop after an accident need guidance to navigate the repair process. They might not know OEM requirements for repairing the damage or the ins and outs of what their insurance policy covers, but shops can help them. 

AkzoNobel Senior Services Consultant Tim Ronak and Business Consultant Tony Adams hosted “Developing Your Consumer's Guide to Fully Reimbursed Auto Claims” during the SEMA Show in Las Vegas during the first week of November. 

Insurers are pushing back against rates and fully reimbursing OEM procedures, and many consumers assume the insurers’ decisions are final. It’s also critical that shops make it clear that they aren’t “padding the bill,” simply performing the necessary repairs to restore the vehicle to proper condition. By helping empower consumers, shops can help ensure everyone involved in the repair process gets fair reimbursement. 

Adams’ and Ronak’s 90-minute discussion covered the rights of consumers, what constitutes a proper repair, tips to communicate information the customer needs to know during the repair process, and also provided attendees with documents they can use as a starting point to communicate with a customer. 

Q: What rights do consumers have? 

Adams: They have a right to choose the repair shop. They have a right to OEM standards. They have the right to full indemnification, not partial reimbursement. They have a right to documentation of denial reasons, and they have a right to arbitration, appraisal, or some sort of legal recourse…maybe small claims court or some of those other things. But these are all consumer rights, and we've developed some tools to help with that. 

Q: The importance of proper repairs: Nobody here is trying to pad the bill, right? 

Adams: We’re just trying to repair the car to an OEM standard and follow all the documented procedures and leverage all of the P-Page logic in the estimating system that we all agree upon that we're going to use. It’s not padding the bill, but that's the word that we sometimes hear. So, it's important to understand that…and empowering customers to just help ensure fair reimbursement for everyone…I used to tell some of my customers, “I didn't buy your car, I didn't wreck your car, and I didn't choose your insurance company. Those things are not necessarily my issue. I'm merely the humble service provider trying to restore your car back to a safe and proper manner.” 

Q: Who is the insurance contract between? 

Adams: Understanding the policy and the consumer, specifically understanding the policy and all of us as consumers of those insurance policies. You’ve got to understand what it contains and what it doesn’t. It is important because it is a contract between the consumer and the insurance company. They chose the third-party provider to help mitigate their damages. We are the service provider trying to restore that vehicle to a safe, operable manner…not every policy has the same types of limits of coverage. So, really understanding what that contract says and for the consumer to understand what that contract says...What I don’t want you to do is practicing law. You don’t want to be giving them legal advice, but helping them identify and understand coverage limits, repair vs. replace, payment of loss details, whether or not they have an appraisal clause, and understanding and reading the fine print.  

Q: How many cars do insurance companies fix? 

Ronak: None. Insurers do not repair cars. They are not in the business of fixing cars. They are in the business of underwriting losses, and that changes the perspective when you start thinking of it as a repairer. Their role is simply to restore that vehicle back to its pre-loss state and ensure they do that with the lowest level of avoidable reliability for the repairer. That’s the big key in all of this. 

Q: How do you quantify loss? 

Adams: We have to understand how the loss is defined in a collision claim and what the repair standard is. It could be pre-loss; it could be like kind and quality…we need to understand what those are...What are the OEM procedures defined? They do create the standard. They define what is a safe and proper manner…deviating from the OEM standard specified repair procedures puts yourself in a position of liability. They are the OEMs that say this is how a vehicle needs to be restored. 

Q: What does repair liability look like? 

Adams: The estimate is not a repair blueprint. It’s merely a financial document and a projection of costs. It may omit required OEM repair procedures. Your duty as a professional repairer is to identify all the required steps necessary for a complete and safe repair, even if they were not listed or approved. What we’re specifically talking about there is the insurer estimate. The insurer’s estimate has no bearing on how the vehicle gets repaired. You as the repair professional decide how the vehicle needs to be repaired so that you’re protecting that consumer and avoiding avoidable repairer liability…You have all the repair, you have all the liability. It’s attached to the person performing the work…courts and experts will not accept, ‘Well, the insurer wouldn’t pay for that’ as your defense. All that says is that "I’ve put my profits ahead of the safety of this repair."