Direct Repair Shops may not always be your best option. On top of the fact that you’ll definitely have to pay your deductible, they may be more inclined to perform conventional repair instead of paintless dent repair like we here at IntelliDent do. Like me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/CelineAtIntellident for up to date information on hail damage repair in San Antonio and the surrounding metro area.
Direct Repair Shops, or commonly known as “DRP’s,” Direct Repair Programs, or Direct Repair Networks, are basically body shops with whom your insurance company has direct contracts to fix their customers’ vehicles. When you call in your automobile hail damage claim, many times your claims representative will encourage you to go directly to their DRP to have your estimate and repair done. Sometimes your insurance company will have their adjusters in-house at that body shop who are writing estimates and paying their insureds out for the covered damage. Other times, they may have a deal worked out with the shop where an employee at the shop writes the estimates, and your insurance agrees to simply pay whatever their estimate comes to.The way most insurance companies determine what shop to use as a direct repair shop is by going around to various shops in the area and seeing who will do the work the cheapest. If you’ve ever had body work done, you know that this is a disastrous way to determine who will work on your car. In this business, the proverbial saying “you get what you pay for,” definitely holds true.
There are three main reasons I highly recommend NOT going with the direct repair shop your insurance company has selected. The first main reason is that they’re going to charge you your deductible no matter what! They have to do this for a number of reasons; a major one is because the body shop’s agreement with the insurance is that they HAVE to perform the repairs for whatever the insurance company’s adjuster has written the damage at, and believe me, adjusters miss damage ALL THE TIME.  So the body shop can’t afford to lose any more money than what they’re already more-than-likely going to lose since the adjuster missed some things. In fact, about 99% of the cars we see have at least some damage that the adjuster has overlooked, which we typically send a “supplement request” to the insurance for so they will pay for the COMPLETE repair of the vehicle (since typically, people want ALL the dents fixed, not just a few of them :). See my blog on “What is a Supplement and Why Do Most Claims Require Them?” to learn more about the supplement process. As a DRP, they aren’t allowed to supplement in most cases, so they need that last $250, $500, or $1,000 to make a profit on the car. Learn more about why we don’t need your deductible on my blog entitled “How Can You Waive My Deductible?”
Here is the second main reason I’d recommend not going to your insurance company’s direct repair shop: many time they are “Body Shops,” meaning they specialize in working on the exterior body of the car. This includes painting, replacing parts, and using fillers to fill in holes. Now, fillers and re-painting IS NOT ALWAYS BAD! I don’t want to mis-communicate that point here. You just REALLY need to make sure you’re going to someone who has a lot of experience and knows what they’re doing if you’re going to have fillers such as bondo put in your new car and are thus going to have it re-painted. Here’s a good video on the right and wrong types of bondo: http://youtu.be/x4RMnuz6ggA. Again, I’ll reiterate that in this business you GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR, and when an insurance company has selected a body shop who agrees to do work for cheaper than any other body shop in town, it’s important to ask yourself why have they agreed to do the work cheaper? What corners are they going to cut in order to save money for themselves and still make a profit? Are they using quality products that will last as long as the car? Or are they going to fill it and re-paint it with cheap products that will crack out over time, fade poorly as opposed to the factory paint job, or just look plain sloppy? So, back to the subject here, that a reason a Direct Repair Shop may not be a good option is that they ARE usually a BODY SHOP. We at IntelliDent are NOT a body shop; we are a paintless dent repair shop specializing in paintless dent repair (commonly called PDR) and dent removal via craftmanship and metal-working, a process which does NOT require new parts, fillers, or paint. For more information, see “What is Paintless Dent Repair, or PDR?” As opposed to us, body shops are going to be more inclined to simply purchase new parts, such as a new hood, roof, or decklid, instead of using PDR to fix your car’s hail damage. They do this because maybe they are not as quick at PDR as they are at simply purchasing and painting a new part, or because it’s actually cheaper to have their in-house guy who is well-seasoned at using fillers and re-painting perform the repair instead of paying a PDR specialist like the technicians we employ to fix the dents. Like I said, fillers and paint aren’t ALWAYS bad, but good paint guys are very hard to find, after-market paint ALWAYS de-values your car no matter how good it looks, after-market paint almost ALWAYS fades differently over time as compared to the factory finish, after-market parts, such as hoods or decklids, may not always fit your car exactly as an original manufacturer part does, and lastly, if your insurance company is paying for this repair, wouldn’t you want to have the work done by people who can make it appear as if your car NEVER had hail damage? Why take a chance at having a body shop do the work and completely de-value your car to the point you lose thousands of dollars when you go to sell it or trade it in down the road? If you ask me, I’d rather just have it done the right way the first time and save myself the headache.
The third and final reason your insurance company’s direct repair shop may not be your best option is that as a body shop staying stationary in one location for years upon years, they may not have much experience with hail damage, as it usually doesn’t hail in one area over and over. There are definitely cities that get hit more often than others, but for the most part, these body shops will have a hail storm for which they fix cars once ever 3 to 5 years. While we do maintain permanent locations all over the country (San Antonio, TX, Oklahoma City, OK, Parker, CO, Olathe, KS, Nashville, TN, Scottsdale, AZ, New Orleans, LA, Minneapolis, MN, and Chicago, IL), we also have mobile teams that travel the country to assist at catastrophe-level storms all year round, so we fix hail and only hail all the time! That’s kinda like if you have a cut on your face and need stitches…are you going to go to your family practice doctor to have him stitch it up? Or are you going to go ahead and opt for a plastic surgeon who specialized in cosmetic stitches and does that every day? Kind of a weird example, I know, but I think it gets the point across. Your family practice doctor can definitely do stitches, but if you want it to look great and not be able to tell, you’re going to the specialist. We’re basically the “plastic surgeons” of hail damage. Ha! I kinda like that example :).
We have elected to NOT be a direct repair shop for any insurance carrier. The main reason is that we have very well-trained and highly experienced technicians who are simply not willing to work for bottom-dollar prices than insurance companies would require us to work for. Additionally, as I mentioned before, insurance adjusters miss damage all the time when assessing hail claims. If we sign a contract promising we’ll perform the repair for the price the adjuster writes and not to supplement any estimate, we’d inevitably end up doing a lot of work for free. Who wants to do that?
Overall, I’m sure the Direct Repair Shops will do an okay job. But if you want your car to look like new, not have to have any questionable fillers or aftermarket paint on it bringing down its overall value, and want to not have to pay your deductible to have it fixed, bring it to a PDR shop like IntelliDent, and rest assured knowing your car is in the hands of the “plastic surgeons” of hail damage.
Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps!
~Celine Hobbs, (855)830-4245, IntelliDentPDR@gmail.com
http://www.intellidentpaintlessrepair.com/san-antonio-auto-hail-repair/
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IntelliDent | Denver CO's Auto Hail Damage Experts 