Thread: Serious question about insurance

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Originally posted by Swifster
Seriously, at $40 something an hour, is life really that bad?

Ha ha ha!! You're lucky you never came in my shop! I don't get as wound up about this as I once did, but that kind of remark shows that you've never had the responsibility to keep the doors open on a highly regulated business. And the fact that the shop owners let your company (and you by extension) get away with that kind of stuff shows that they are piss poor business people and deserve the grief they get. Or they cheat you and the vehicle owner trying to stay alive. I'm sure your bosses would be proud of that.

I never cheated (yes NEVER and I invited any insurance provider to audit any job any time) any insurance company. But the data bases and procedure pages are very specific about what is included and what is not. Any honest, knowledgable, appraiser, and his/her management, knew what procedures needed to be done. And I made sure we charged for every step of every procedure we were due. No more, no less. And yes, I was hated by a lot of insurance people because I was a "hard ass". But I challenged any one of them to show me where I was wrong about being paid what I was entitled to. Being respected is more important to me than being liked.

But then I also did business a bit different than most. I OWNED about 92% of my customers because of my advocacy on their behalf, and my commitment to doing the job right and on time. (this BTW is very much like what's gone wrong with health care and why no body is happy there, because the consumers and providers have given up their natural positions to a third party who has dispirate interests) For others reading this, the auto body business has a dimension that most businesses don't. Whenever most businesses sell a product or service it's a two party transaction. Buyer and seller, meet, agree, trade value, and both get what they agreed to. In auto body, mostly, it's a three party transaction, buyer, seller, and payer (insurance co). Makes the transaction somewhat more difficult. The buyer wants everything, and doesn't want to pay for it (except the deductible), the shop should want to do it right, and the insurance company wants to keep it's costs as low as possible. Now body shop operators are usually not the best of business people, many being former technicians who had the balls to go on their own. But lacking business savvy they are easily pushed around by the much more skillfull insurance reps, and they're intimidated by the potential withholding of payment (a hammer the ins boys are not afraid to exploit no matter how subtly). Hey, that's business. You win or lose based on your abilities. As a grown up you better know the rules when you get in the game. (Yes, this IS the less wound up version)

So Swif, don't take this as a personal attack, just the other point of view. When you ask that question about $40 dollars making it sound so generous answer me this. What's the labor rate for an automotive mechanical shop in that same market area? I'd bet it's somewhere between $60-100.00 per hour. And they go by a flat rate manual too. A well trained tech on the mechanical side really cost that much more than on the body side? The mechanical shop really have that much more invested in equipment? Can the body shop operator rent his building for half what the mech guy does? Is the city, county, state so generous to cut the body shops taxes in half? Do the utility companies charge the body shop half rate for electricity, gas, water,etc.? Do the insurance companies write garage keeper's policies at half rate for the body shop (yeah right!). Do you think the feds let the body shop guy only pay half as much social security tax, and medicare tax? There's more, but I said I don't get as wound up anymore. Paying half the rate of a mechanical shop, and then refusing to pay for valid procedures/materials on top of that is theft......................can't think of a nicer way to put it.