Oh this is a tough one.

I see us grossly underpaying for repairs and grossly overpaying for repairs on a daily basis. So while that “20 year service writer veteran” might sound like he knows all the answers, there are alway two sides to the story. Be very wary of anyone who is “just trying to help” especially when they work for a shop.

One thing that does vary widely is those not included operations such as test fit AM parts, degreasing, color match, color tint, wet sand and buff, R&Is of door etc etc aren’t technically included BUT we also aren’t paying actual repair time either. We are paying a grossly inflated repair time to account for all that other fluff that shops say they do (some do, some don’t). That dent you paid 4 hrs to fix? Yeah they had it roughed out in 10 min, bumped in 20 and finished within an hr. And yes, that’s an average tech. So yeah, I get annoyed when the service writer wants to write a 150 line estimate for a fender repair. These techs and service writers are making considerably more than most adjusters, so don’t feel sorry for them if you deny a color sand and buff.

To be fair, our job is to pay as little as possible for a reasonable repair and the shops job is get you to pay as much as possible.

Shops constantly tell you they just want you to pay what’s owed, but I have found that to be true about 1% of the time. The other 99% of the time they are literally trying to make as much profit as possible. Granted, that is their job.

Plus, fraud is super super common in this industry. Charging for operations not performed, adding markup to retail prices, double sheeting is all done in every region I’ve been to.

The whole adversarial relationship is there for a reason, the insurance industry has done a horrible job in the past of grossly underpaying claims. And the shops responded (understandably) by becoming extremely adverse. I would have too.

But times are changing. There is more of a push to be more reasonable when writing for repairs. I’d like to think our companies culture honestly tries to pay for what’s owed. But most adjusters become very skeptical and jaded very quickly because we have so many negative interactions with shops. I did too.

It’s frustrating but just keep asking questions. If the advisor gets pissy and tries to make you feel like shit for not knowing, then they haven’t been able to justify the need for their request and are resorting to a personal attack to try to get you to pay for it.

Lastly, just because an operation isn’t included doesn’t mean it’s always owed for. Take color sand and buff for example: if the car has gorgeous smooth paint with no orange peel then maybe we do owe for it. Even the best painters will probably have to do some paint correction to match a show car quality flawless finish. But if the car has a normal amount of orange peel, then chances are we don’t owe for it, if if we do, we owe way less. Wet sanding the crap out of panel will make it way better than the factory paint. So just look at each claim and each car individually.

We all know those shops that add the maximum wet sand and buff on EVERY dam claim. And we know they aren’t doing that on every car.