International Research Incorporated (IRI) announced that it has launched a body shop labor rate survey website at https://bodyshopratesurvey.com.
IRI says its website is the only one specifically designed to provide the collision repair industry with the prevailing rates being charged in any area of the U.S. IRI says it is not associated with (or funded by) any insurance company, trade association or special interests, and individual shop surveys will not be shared. The site is funded by the sponsors on the Web pages and users who pay an annual fee of $189 to access and sort the database as many times as they want for an entire year.
"Technology has made it possible for this information to be gathered, calculated and available to every collision repair center, insurance company, consumer, lawmaker and insurance commissioner in the country at a very low cost, allowing them to be done annually," says IRI spokesperson David Brown. "Trade associations no longer need to raise thousands of dollars to conduct surveys, and individual shops won’t spend hours of their precious time conducting surveys only to be told, ‘You’re the only shop in the area with those results.’ Our website makes the entire survey process very transparent, which we believe is a good thing for all the stakeholders."
IRI’s research indicated that the site needed to accomplish four things:
• Make it easy for collision repair centers to enter their rates annually
• Keep their individual surveys confidential
• Be sure the results are accurate, easy to access and relevant to each individual market
• Make it available at the lowest cost possible
"We believe our website has accomplished all four of these things," says Brown. "The data can be sorted by geographic location (range finder) and shop size (retail sales in dollars). The results are also displayed in retail (door) rates and discounted (DRP/fleet) rates so the users will have a realistic prevailing range to work with. The site even has a blog which allows users to communicate their thoughts about the site and ideas about how this new tool could be utilized the best."
More information:
Visit https://bodyshopratesurvey.com, e-mail [email protected] or call David Brown at (302) 388-9196.
