A Chorus of Concerns: Voices Rise at July CIC

by Alana Quartuccio

“Your voice matters.”

Collision Industry Conference (CIC) Chair Dan Risley conveyed this strong message in his opening remarks during the July conference held in Denver, CO. His encouragement set the tone for a day filled with enlightening discussions that explored technologies, offered automation, estimating and post-repair customer experience solutions, questioned the intentions of proposed federal Right to Repair legislation and unleashed a chorus of alarm and concerns over the asTech/GEICO standardized pricing agreement, which had just been announced the previous day. 

First to respond to Risley’s urging to take advantage of open mic time was Bob McSherry (North Haven Auto Body; North Haven, CT), who sought answers from asTech representatives about news of the aforementioned agreement. “Can you please explain to me why you – a vendor that I use – would enter into a standardized pricing agreement on behalf of the customer, which is me?” He proceeded to call it a “special kind of stupid. I’ve been a long-time user, and I can tell you that comes to an end when I go back to work tomorrow. If someone can enlighten me, I would really like to know why you would enter into an agreement on my behalf with an insurance carrier. It absolutely freaking baffles me.” 

Responding for asTech was Jason Vilardi, vice president of sales, insurance and estimatics relations, who claimed the agreement would not change their position to do safe and proper repairs and that “we did this for our customers to streamline everything for them to make the process easier. We didn’t really take this as being a massively negative thing; we got a top carrier who most people would say they’ve struggled with, and now we brought them in on what we do, how we do it and – in our minds – are willing to almost step up and actually cover more OEM scans than they every previously did.” He further claimed that asTech customers “should not feel a change in the reimbursement process.” 

Barry Dorn (Dorn’s Body and Paint; Mechanicsville, VA) questioned how asTech could enter into an agreement with an entity that isn’t involved with the repair process at all. 

Others came forward, including Society of Collision Repair Specialists Executive Director Aaron Schulenburg, who brought forth an “elephant-in-the-room” question directed to Vilardi: “Jason, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but the answer that I heard was that they endorsed your product…what I’m curious about is, was the standardized pricing agreement predicated on the endorsement of your product? So, was this standardized pricing a result of the endorsement?” 

Vilardi evaded, “A customer is still in the same position they were beforehand. They’re not making less money from us on a scan today than they made yesterday, although the price is less. The cost is less, so they will be made whole in their numbers.” 

“I strongly object to third parties engaging and negotiating set prices, coming up with agreements or controlling a market price on behalf of me, my industry or my customers,” objected Jeff Butler (Haury’s Collision & Vintage; Seattle, WA) whose comments were met with applause.

Mike Anderson (Collision Advice) came forward to voice concerns about “the precedent it sets for taking the collision repair professional out of the equation as it’s my understanding that the asTech/Repairify software is going to determine whether an aftermarket scan tool suffices or an OEM scan tool. They’re making that determination, not the shop, not the consumer, not the OEM certification program, but their software device is, if that’s accurate.

“It disregards anything that engineers from the OEMs have told us in regard to OEM scan tools,” Anderson continued. “As someone who has the blessing and opportunity to work with a lot of OEMs, I can stand here, 1,000 percent without hesitation or reservation, and say there is a huge difference between an aftermarket and OEM scan tool.” 

Conversations brought other concerns to light. The Parts and Materials Committee brought Schulenburg, Wayne Weikel (Alliance for Automotive Innovation) and Bob Redding (Automotive Service Association) to the stage to dive into the intentions of the proposed REPAIR Act, expressing that this legislation is less about independent repairers having access to information to fix vehicles properly and more about protecting parts choices. 

Schulenburg used what the CAR Coalition says about the proposed bills as an example of the real intentions behind the bill and those championing it. They define its goal as being to “protect the ability to get the parts, tools and information to choose aftermarket parts. That’s different from making sure that consumers have the right to choose a repairer who has the parts, tools and information to fix cars. That’s a very specific purpose. If you read through it, you start to understand where the focus is. The focus is on protecting the choice of a part type rather than necessarily protecting the type of repair or protecting safety. The REPAIR Act doesn’t mention safety anywhere. It’s not a bill that talks about consumers having the right to choose or not be influenced or be limited or things along those lines. So when you start looking at the drivers behind that and look at groups like the CAR Coalition, you have lots of aftermarket parts companies, alternative parts platforms, insurance companies and things along those lines. So in my opinion, both bills are very much parts acts; one is about protecting the right to choose aftermarket parts, and the other is about limiting intellectual property protection for OEMs on patents, and they’re really both focused on parts initiatives.”

Weikel added that a lot of time has been spent up at Capitol Hill by the other side to present the bill as “Right to Repair, but they don’t actually represent repairers. The REPAIR Act has been framed to present this as the ability to complete a repair when that’s not really what it’s about.” 

Schulenburg hopes “conversations can shift from simply preserving a consumer’s choice for one type of part, to a consumer having the ability to choose where they want to have their vehicle repaired, how they want to have it repaired and with what type of parts they want it repaired, whether that means they want an original part or an alternative part, whether they want to go to an insurance preferred shop or an OEM-preferred shop. It should be focused on making sure that consumers are entitled to safe, proper and thorough repairs.”

“What Aaron is saying is very important,” stressed Redding. “When we go into the Congressional Office about our position and tell them we don’t support these bills as they’re currently drafted, their response is, ‘I don’t understand that; we’re doing this to help you.’ They don’t understand all the dynamics of these various industry sectors. When you explain it to them, they get it, so we’re trying to shift this debate to if you are going to do a repair bill, that affects all repairers – mechanical and collision – it needs to do what we want it to do.

“It’s difficult to put the toothpaste back in the tube, so it’s critical we get this bill right,” he added. 

The Emerging Technologies Committee armed the audience with important intel on how to properly maintain low-voltage systems within EV and hybrid vehicles and the importance of following OEM service information. “It’s really important to know what you’re up against,” stated Donny Seyfer (National Automotive Service Task Force).

“Learn the different types of vehicles that you service and what their needs are for maintenance,” Seyfer offered. “If you’ve got a vehicle that’s going to be [at the shop] for a while, with a lot of these modern charging systems, the vehicles actually draw current by sitting there. And it’s big numbers these days, so you may actually want to maintain a battery while the vehicle is waiting for parts or things that might take a while to get to the shop. Make sure you get a real battery charger. The prices are rather stunning, but the nice part is that many of them are capable of doing all different chemistries for you.”

Seyfer warned, “Charging has to be current, voltage and temperature regulated. If any one of those three parts of the triangle are off, you can damage a battery, so this is why modern chargers are really important, because if you just put the right voltage to it, you could be putting stunning amounts of current in it with some of the old push-around batteries.”

“Our battery technology is getting better, so we can make these technologies work much more efficiently and much more effectively,” stated Scott Baumfalk (Automotive Imports; Littleton, CO), who explained he views the 48-volt-mild-hybrid as a “re-emerging technology” as opposed to emerging “because we dealt with these, and any of you in the industry that have been there for three decades or more, like myself, have seen these technologies. But they weren’t quite as good as they are now, primarily because of our battery technology.

“Another big thing for these 48-volt systems is how they work with our start/stop systems and in lowering emissions,” he added. “The simple start/stop system that we’ve become acclimated to lowers emissions somewhere between five and 12 percent, depending on whose study you’re reading.” He used Mercedes’ redesign of their entire platform which “eliminated the mechanical 12-volt starter altogether,” and as a result, “they have no belt, they have no accessories on the front, and they start and stop this engine and regulate and generate electricity all through an integrated starter/generator between the motor and the transmission. So if this battery fails or if the 12-volt battery gets too low, this car will not start, it will not move, and you’ll likely be calling a tow truck or someone who has a lot of experience with these in order to get this car up and running.”

These technologies are “lowering emissions,” he concluded. “We’re starting and stopping the cars more seamlessly and increasing the performance of these cars. So the first wheel revolution of the internal combustion engine is propelled by the medium hybrid system. And so that’s a big gain there. They don’t have to make the engine more powerful. They don’t have to use more hydrocarbons, and we have a better product.”

For the third time on the CIC stage, discussion continued about the SCRS blend study, but this time, the conversation focused on the “significant amount of changes” that are now taking place with shops’ billing and insurance claim practices. Schulenburg was joined by a panel of technical experts from some of the leading paint manufacturers including Jeff Wildman and Ralph Lieja (BASF), Mark Jahnke (Axalta) and Ryan Brown (AkzoNobel) who shared their respective companies’ processes for developing their paint systems bringing to light that variations and variables that need to be considered, which verifies the importance of having different conversations in order to arm the repair planner with the right dialogue to have with the bill payer. 

 Michael Lastuka (State Farm) and Darrell Amberson (LaMettry’s Collision; MN) were also on hand to contribute some poignant observations from the perspective of both insurers and repairers. Lastuka expressed agreement about having the right conversations, stating that “knowledge is power” and stressing that shops should take the time to communicate.

Danny Gredinberg (Database Enhancement Gateway) led the Estimating and Repair Planning Committee’s critical “on-the-spot evaluation” discussion “because no two accidents, no two repairs are identical to each other.” 

Using CCC Estimated Worktime Premise as an example, Gredinberg pointed out, “There’s lot of details in there, especially the list of operations that are commonly not factored or included in any of the published labor times here. And when you go down this list of operations, there are nearly 43 Estimated Worktime Operations just in this section alone on the body side. That’s not factored into any published labor time.”

He illustrated various factors that come into play. “How can we take that cookie cutter and apply that logic across a damaged vehicle every single time? So again, on-the-spot evaluation, is it the same thing over and over again, or can there be variables involved? And there’s weather and conditions and different considerations that a repair planner has to take into account on that specific year, make and model car.” 

Communication is key in the process, and it’s a fact-based conversation, not an emotional one, Gredinberg suggested. “We need to make sure the right people are getting that communication – our repair planners, estimators, CSRs, people on the front end who can identify these challenges or these potential things that are going to blow up in the middle of the repair process so we can have the right materials, we can have the right supplies, we can have the right consideration, so you can have the right discussion with the person who is going to reimburse for that bill, whether it be the customer or the bill payer itself.” 

Erin Solis (Certified Collision Group) pointed out that technicians have to understand how to use the tools and the repair planners who are “doing the on-the-spot evaluation to put it on the repair plan have to be able to explain it to whoever is paying the bill. And I think that there’s a big disconnect from the person who’s actually using the tools to the person who is doing the evaluation. And we need to bridge that gap a little.” 

“You need to be able to explain it in a way that makes sense to both your customer and the bill payer involved. So, that way it makes sense to them,” agreed Gredinberg, adding that it all comes down to creating a memorable experience for the customer to know “the work that we do is going to be tailored and customized to them.”

The Future Disruptions Committee panelists sought answers to the question: How can automation be used to make auto body facilities more efficient?

Darrell Amberson foresees it being used for the “monumental task” in administrative work due to the trend of needing to provide “more documentation to prove what we’re doing in terms of the repair process to protect ourselves and to offer verification to the insurers. Half our staff essentially does admin support work, planning, organizing, orchestrating, interacting with customers that isn’t part of directly fixing the car, so there would be huge value if there were things that could improve that efficiency. We really haven’t seen a lot of that.” 

“What is it going to take to get automated refinishing, for example?” moderator Trent Tinsley (Entegral) inquired. “There are some products out there right now that automate welding. How far away are we from doing that? They can do some basic things now; I saw demonstrations at SEMA. They can do some welding operations on a wheel. But how far away are we from automating those sorts of things in the shop? I don’t think we’re anywhere near where we could be.”

The OEM Relations Committee set out to address post repair inspections and how the industry can work to elevate the collision repair experience overall. Led by co-chairs Solis and Liz Stein (Certified Collision Group), panelists included Jeff Butler (Haury’s Collision & Vintage and Collision Consulting of Washington), Ron Reichen (Precision Body and Paint; Beaverton, OR) and Kelly Dougherty (General Motors), who examined issues from the perspective of the “empty chair.” 

Previous studies showed that consumers’ largest complaints had to do with paint, but there’s possibly a deeper problem. Stein revealed, “The consumer had returned to the original repairer an average of three times before they actually went to that post-repair inspection. So, not only was it three times the cost; for those of you who are shop owners, think about the three times that they went back. You’ve had to pay the technician, you had to pay the painter, to try to address those issues.” 

Stein shared her own personal experience involving her daughter’s vehicle and how the repair facility’s “consultative approach” made for a much better experience for the young new driver. 

Too many shops don’t “read the signs on the side of the road,” Butler indicated. “They don’t know the rules, they don’t follow them, and they don’t care, right?” He referred to this negative method as “practicing law without a license.” 

Reichen suggested shops “get the idea of an estimate out of your mind. Start with a collision consultation, review the vehicle, review the repair procedures on the obvious damage that you have. Do a meticulous disassembly of the vehicle, measure it. Do those accurate things, follow the repair procedures after you’ve read them and analyzed them.”

The next CIC meeting will be held November 5 in Las Vegas during SEMA 2024. Visit ciclink.com for more information.

Want more? Check out the September 2024 issue of Hammer & Dolly!