INSURANCE OPTIONS

Get the best options whether you’re insured or not, depending on the amount of your excess or your No Claims Bonus

Having a number of options is also important when it comes to pricing a repair job for insurance. Even though most people think that if they have insurance they are covered, there are lots of factors that come into play such as the amount of the excess and how this affects the amount that the customer (rather than the insurance company) has to pay. If the customer doesn’t want to go through insurance, for whatever reason, then the next question is: what are our options? What can we suggest to them?

For people who do have insurance, sometimes they won’t want to make a claim because it may affect their no-claims bonus.

They may have a young driver, or there could be some other information there that they don’t want to tell me about. So options there are to come up with a scenario that can do something for them outside of insurance. Similar to what you would do for pricing a repair for an expensive Mercedes, give them options for what we can do to keep the cost down where it’s applicable.

Insurance is generally speaking the best way to go, because the insurance market gives you a set rate, set time, and extras that we go for that generally the private market wouldn’t get. For us as collision repair specialists, it’s good as well, because if someone is going around looking for three different quotes, if it’s a private job then Joe Bloke down the road will take away their options, give them the lowest price, win the job and then work accordingly.

If you can convert it to insurance, then you can go by a schedule that enables you to do what is required. That means sometimes giving a better long term option, but for the most part it means more options for the customer, and decisions not based on price but on a sensible long term repair.

Insurance is probably the preferred way that we’d like customers to go, but we don’t pressure them into that option. Rather than using second hand parts, for example, you can use new parts, depending on the age of the vehicle.

How insurance helps with panel beating

A lot of our customers appreciate the level of detail and feedback we give in not only pricing a job but seeing that job through to completion. Our point of difference is that we educate the customer.

And if there is a scenario where there may be some deterioration further along the track, we aim to make the client fully aware of that risk, so that they don’t need to come back to us.