Mike Daniel thinks insurance companies may be spending premium dollars foolishly if they continue sending claims personnel into shops.
“They’re wasting so much money on company cars and adjusters and things like that,” Daniel, who owns three Mountain View Autobody Shops in New Jersey, said when asked what message he’d like to convey to insurance companies. “I think the lion’s share of shops are trying to do the right thing.
“How many shops out there are really going to, quote, ‘get one over on them’? In reality, each guy with a car and health insurance is costing them $100,000 or $120,000 a year. Multiply that by how many adjusters there are per insurance company,” Daniel said.
“Let us do our thing, give us the claim, we’ll schedule them, we’ll write the car, and call it a day. You take out the middleman and the cars are going to cycle through a heck of a lot faster,” he said. “With all the technology and review capabilities that they have, it’s not like severity is going to shoot through the roof. They’ll never allow that. But even severity goes up a hundred dollars across the country, it’s not going to make or break them when they’re getting rid of all that overhead.”
Daniel and other shop owners were asked what they think insurers -- or more insurers -- could do, or stop doing, to improve the claims process for shops, insurers or the customer. Here are some of their thoughts.
Online Payment Information
Micah Strom, co-owner of Modern Collision Repair in Bainbridge Island, WA, said he’d like to see more insurance companies follow the lead of USAA in terms of providing claims financial information on an online portal.
“You can go in and find out what payments have been made,” Strom said. “So you’re not trying to chase down payments. If the customer doesn’t have it, and we never got it, where are the payments? That’s something that benefits the shops but also can benefit the insurers, because they wouldn’t have phone calls from body shops asking, ‘Where’s the payment?’
“USAA has this, and it works out really well,” Strom said. “I can go on there and see what’s been cashed or where the payment is sitting.”
Another change he’d like to see is having a particular adjuster to work with.
“It’s very frustrating when you can never talk to the same person,” Strom said of many insurers. “So they don’t know how your business runs. They’re used to dealing with shops from one end of the spectrum to the other.
“With several insurers, like Progressive, we have a local adjuster that we work very well with,” Strom said. “I think that’s beneficial for the shops, but also for insurers. When you call some of the other insurance companies, you get whoever they’ve assigned to it. Or a team where you have 10 or 15 different people you may talk to.”
Educate Consumers Before the Claim
A number of shop owners said the changes they’d like to see insurance companies make would relate to the process before a customer even has a claim.
“Just being a little more open and transparent when they are selling their policies regarding what they really say and what they really cover,” said Kena Dacus of Dacus Auto Body in McPherson, KS. “Even explaining some of the add-ons you can purchase, the policy for OEM parts and some of those other riders, like rental, things like that.
“Customers come in all the time and think they have a certain coverage, and they find out after the fact that they really don’t. They’re not going to get those OEM parts, or they’re not going to get a rental, or that they don’t have glass coverage,” Dacus said. “I’ve talked a lot with some of the agents in our area about this. I think it would behoove them as an agent, too, to really go through these policies so their customers understand. I think it would build trust and just a more educated consumer in general.”
Tim Paap of Paap Auto Body in Illinois agreed.
“You can’t even look at a policy until you purchase a policy,” Paap said. “I’m going through buying home insurance again, not only for my personal house, but for our rental properties too, and all they’re interested in showing is the declaration pages. I tell them that I want to actually see the policy. And so far, not a single agent has been able or is willing to show me the actual policy until after I buy it.”
Andy Grundman.
Andy Grundman of Pat’s Body Shop in Wausau, WI, has been frustrated by that as well.
“I’ve been talking to local agents trying to round up policies [to show to] an attorney, as I have been working on a system to address short-pays,” Grundman said. “The agents have straight up told me that unless you have a policy signed, I cannot give you that policy.”
He said one agent was willing to switch his personal insurance from company to company to allow him to get policies from all the companies the agent represents.
“It shouldn’t take all that,” Grundman said. “What are you guys trying to hide?”
Mike Braido agreed insurers could do more to explain policy coverages to the insured if not at the time of sale, at least prior to their arrival at the shop.
“Rental car coverage, the amount of their deductible, aftermarket parts, etc., so we’re not always the bad guy having to explain those things to their insureds, and them then having to make a call back to their insurer to verify,” said Braido, co-owner of Auto Body Expressions in Elk Grove, CA.
Get Back to Customer Service Focus
As a DRP shop for a number of carriers, Braido also would like to see insurers give shops more leeway related to the use of PartsTrader.
“Give us a little more flexibility to use our own [parts] sources,” he said.
Lastly, he said, insurers seem to have moved away from the emphasis they had on customer service 10 or 20 years ago.
Evan Opeka.
“All those guys have retired and are gone,” he said. “The new guys have all worked for every insurance company, so everything’s kind of the same, and they’ve kind of lost the train of thought of customer service, and it seems like it’s all about the dollars.”
Evan Opeka of Opeka Auto Repair, which operates three shops in Western Pennsylvania, said the message he’d like to convey to insurers is based on how his company operates.
“One thing that we do that’s different from a lot of shops is that we put our eyes on every single car before it is scheduled in,” Opeka said. “Whether they have an estimate from an insurance company or a photo estimate from online, we want to have that vehicle come in so we can get our own photos and write our own estimate.
“We know that they’re missing a lot on the photo- or AI-generated estimates,” Opeka said. “Rather than just capturing the car and disassembling it and blueprinting it, if we can supplement it before it even comes in, we can schedule better, we can have better parts availability. But we’re running into insurers unwilling to budge at all from that initial estimate until the vehicle is disassembled onsite, even if it’s pretty obvious that there’s going to be a large supplement.
“So if we could get them to at least address the obvious stuff that we’re providing valid photos for upfront, that would definitely help us out,” he said.
John Yoswick