Miscellaneous

Ohio Collision Repairers Just Say ?No? To Unsafe Repairs

By admin

Lucky for this customer that she went to an independent collision repair facility rather than one willing to simply follow the dictates of an insurance company bent on saving money.

Williamsburg, Ohio shop owner Jim Krotchen, of All Makes Collision Repair Service, determined that his customer’s 2002 Honda CRV needed to be repaired using a new suspension, rather than one coming from a total loss vehicle from the salvage yard.  In Krotchen’s opinion as a collision repair expert — who is liable if there is a problem with the repair — installing a used suspension on this vehicle was an issue of safety.  There simply was no way of ensuring that the salvaged suspension had not been structurally fatigued.  As a result, Krotchen installed a new Honda suspension on this consumer’s vehicle.

The insurer, whose adjusters often receive no more than two weeks of “training” before being cleared to write estimates for repairing other people’s vehicles, decided that a used suspension would have been just fine for this repair and refused to pay for the new suspension.  As a result, All Makes Collision Repair Service is being forced to sue for the remainder of the repair bill.

It never ceases to astonish me that insurers feel justified in putting people’s safety at risk simply to save money.  This isn’t an issue of waste or extravagance.  This is about ensuring that this consumer’s vehicle is safe to drive and, thereby, protecting her, her passengers, and every other traveller on the road.

Full post as published by AutoMuse on August 24, 2007 (boomark / email).