1. Approved shops are in cahoots with the insurers. Auto insurers like State Farm and others contract with providers to repair vehicles for a pre-negotiated rate (think of it as managed care for sick cars). This encourages auto body shops to cut corners. Some practices, such as requiring low hourly rates and making the shop pick up the rental car tab if a repair takes too long, could tempt shops to cut corners quite a bit — by, say, neglecting to align the wheels or using plastic filler in a dent rather than replacing the sheet metal.

Read more

Although there is no formal Consumer Bill of Rights for auto body repair, we feel that the below should be. If your auto body shop doesn’t agree with it, you may want to consider going somewhere else.

Read more

If you want your car to take care of you, then you need to take care of your car. Having it repaired professionally will not only help retain it’s value but will save you money in the long run. As with anything mechanical, if you start hearing a “funny” noise, you have two choices: Read more

By law (at least at this writing) insurance companies can’t dictate to you which auto body shop to use. However, when it comes to selecting one, what criteria should be used in determining which shop to pick? Here are some valuable tips for chosing a qualified auto body repair shop:

Read more

Each auto body repair shop may differ from the below, but this will give you a good idea of the entire process. Remember that after your car has been repaired, there is another step that you should take if you were not the at fault driver. Any time a car has been in an accident, it loses value regardless of how well the repairs were done. If you take two cars into a dealer and one has been in an accident, it will be worth less. This difference in price is called Diminished Value. To learn how to get this money from the insurance company of the person that hit you, go to Advocate Auto Claims.

Read more