Shop Profile: Collins Collision Center
Shop Name: Collins Collision Center Location: Atlanta, Ga. Established: August 1998 President: Jeff Collins Shop Size: 17,000 square feet No. of Employees: 10 Average Repair Volume: 175 cars per month Average Repair Cost: $1,950 Cruising Right Along While shop owner Jeff Collins is only 42 years old, he says buying his PT Cruiser a couple
Protecting Your Children’s Inheritance
You may be divorced twice and on your third marriage (so far so good), but if you die first, your spouse and stepchildren may end up spending your rightful heir’s inheritance – unless you plan ahead. Families are more complicated than they used to be. With so many people divorced and remarried, a family gathering
Point – Counterpoint
Are Double Standards OK, Depending Who’s Paying the Bill?
Can Your Shop Withstand the Scrutiny?
Shops producing poor quality repairs?
Would I Lie to You
An uneducated consumer is just as likely to make a bad decision as a drunk guy flirting with a statuesque woman who’s got a deep, sexy voice and calls herself Al. But the key to educating consumers is to do it before something bad happens. Trying to explain your estimate after they’ve already questioned it causes distrust – and will likely cost you the job.
Say You Don’t Want a Revolution
If you label your customers as “nuts” to brush off their repair complaints and tell them to “just bring it back” withoutaddressing the actual problem, your comebacks are costing you cash.
Save a Buck… Pass the Buck?
As the market demands cheaper, faster, better repairs, the concept of “better” can often be forgotten. But who decides what’s acceptable in terms of repair quality? And how close is close enough?
Signs of the Times: Mooresville Paint & Amp Bodyshop
Since this father-daughter team began posting attention-grabbing signs in front of their shop, they’ve educated passing drivers and increased business. “Crooked and Corrupt Insurance Adjusters Not Welcome In This Shop.” If you drove past Mooresville Paint & Bodyshop in Mooresville, Ind., last September, that’s the sign you would’ve seen in front of the facility. It
A Failure to Communicate
Shops’ goals and insurance companies’ goals don’t always conflict. But when they do, the difference between getting your point across or making someone cross is how you communicate
Are Double Standards OK, Depending Who’s Paying the Bill?
A double standard [where you write a different estimate if the repair is paid by an insurance company rather than a customer paying out of pocket] creates an image of what this industry is trying to defeat, which is that we’re crooks. I don’t want to present one image to one customer and another image
Breathe Easy: Painters and Asthma
The same characteristics of polyurethanes that make them such good paints also cause isocyanate asthma in some painters. How can you prevent your painters from becoming ill? By understanding the health risks they take each day and insisting they use the proper breathing equipment.
Flat-Out Fair: Break Up Labor and Pay Everyone Fairly
How do you break up labor and pay everyone fairly? While converting his shop from all combination techs to a departmentalized metal shop and paint shop (a process he refers to as “Armageddon”), this shop manager developed a system to pay techs what they deserve while motivating them to work as efficiently as possible. It