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I work for the biggest chain of car body shops in the UK, and have been in the industry for the past 20 odd years. I now have a major gripe with how insurance companies treat their customers 'behind the scenes'. It is a natural assumption to think that after an accident, your insurance company will pay for the full cost of repairs done by the body shop, but sadly this is not so much the case any more.
Here's a brief explanation of how the accident repair process works. Major insurance companies like Norwich union, Axa, etc. now have contracts with the big body shop chains, where they send a little over £1,000 with every job, and that is the payment. It is then up to the body shop to complete the repairs to your vehicle within this cost. This is officially called 'The average repair cost'. It is a figure that the insurance companies say will balance itself out over the course of the year, as they are supposed to send the bodyshop both large and small jobs, with the smaller jobs being, of course, overpaid.
This seems to workout well on paper, but in reality, and with the greed of the insurance companies we find that most of the small jobs end up being sent to the other body shops with whom they have no such contact, leaving us with all the larger jobs. I suppose its understandable as they wouldn't want to pay their £1,000 contracted cost for a £200 repair job. However this leaves our body shop having to fully absorb the cost of any repair.
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Now think about it. We get sent, for example, a standard size job that costs in the region of £4,500 to complete, and we are only getting paid £1,000 for it, something has to give. Firstly, as much as possible is repaired and not replaced. This is because the cost of every single new part comes directly out of our £1,000 cost. Most jobs are simply beaten back into shape and filled with body filler, broken headlamps and bumpers are plastic welded back together and the absolute minimum is done. Vehicles that in the past would have had its chassis measured, are now 'chanced' with only the very worst jobs now being put onto a jig system. Basically, as you can imagine, the vehicle body repair industry is now turning into a cost saving exercise.
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I personally think the whole process is disgusting. People pay a lot of money for their insurance policies and the least they expect is a decent job done on their vehicle if they ever need to make a claim. We are living in the 00's but have slipped right back to the bodging 70's again, and its all due to the greed of the insurance companies. We are not talking about the smaller insurance companies here, but the main names (I'm sure you know who we're talking about!). No wonder they can offer such cheap insurance.
By: Andrew
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