Don’t Leave Dollars on the Table: Total Losses
Total losses are often regarded as a loss to a body shop. But the fact is the loss is your customers’ and doesn’t have to be borne in any sense by your business.
Proprietary Repairs
“Do you think that in the near future, other car manufacturers will follow Jaguar’s lead and require repair shops to be ‘certified’ to fix their vehicles?”
A Few Good Techs
Is there really a technician shortage or just a misappropriation of qualified techs? Is the pool of technicians shrinking faster than the collision repair market?
Will the end result be higher door rates?
The Return of Competitive Bidding
The time has come to examine the basis on which shops compete. To do this, you must first ask yourself: With whom am I competing? An insurer and its “phantom” shops or other actual shops in my local market?
Going Head to Head
Collision repair consolidators seem focused on customer service as opposed to offering insurance companies even lower repair costs. They’re also concentrated on honing their operations to a razor sharp state of efficiency (which, incidentally, will lower repair costs).
Shrewd Player, Poor Payer: Progressive’s “Concierge” Program
Despite Progressive’s hardball reputation, it’s had no trouble recruiting shops for its “concierge” program – which eliminates all shop/customer contact and makes Progressive liable for repairs.
Jagging Rights: Jaguar’s Exclusive Aluminum-Repair Network of Authorized Shops
This shop spent $100K to gain entry to Jaguar’s exclusive aluminum-repair network of authorized shops. While developing technologies from the world’s automakers have left most shops out in the cold, they also present risk-takers with some real opportunities. Fairless Hills, Pa. – Hunt Auto Body is at first glance, a typical independent body shop, tucked
Bull In a Body Shop
When you believe something – fact or fiction – your belief shapes your reality. In this industry, repairers have held certain convictions for so long that they can’t recognize them for what they really are: bull.
Blind Claims Auditors: A Deal’s a Deal?
In one of my favorite films, Fargo, the general sales manager of a new car dealership is on the phone with the slime balls he conspired with to kidnap his own wife. Upon learning the circumstances had changed and the villains wanted more of the ransom, the sales manager/husband played by William Macy exclaims: "Hey,
Who’s Really In Control?
Painter Thomas Ferry questions why autobody shop rates are so low compared to other trades
You Determine Pricing
In an unregulated industry like collision repair, prices are subject to whatever the market will bear. Payers do not control prices. You can use any guide you want, write estimates on the back of your business cards or give written quotes in Euro exchange rates if you like. You might have missed a National Association
Mc Bodywork: Three C Body Shop
n on the facility’s management is often monumental. Dumbing Down Our Workforce The expertise required to fix accident-damaged cars has long been the strength of the collision repair profession. It’s a specialty. From the viewpoint of the lay person, there’s still a good deal of magic surrounding the work. But during the ’90s, the industry