Who Really Guarantees Your Auto Body Shop Repair?
If you’ve ever gotten into an auto accident, then you already know how stressful it is. Even if it’s nothing more than a small fender bender or a scrape against a tree, you still have to deal with the knowledge that you’ll need to shell out hundreds of dollars on the auto body repair.
If you have good auto insurance, that can help mitigate a lot of the financial damage. In theory, the auto insurance company will pay for any auto body repairs, or at least pay for a portion of them, and that way you won’t have to worry about dealing with paying for them out of pocket. That can be a great relief, and make full coverage auto insurance feel well worth the price.
Unfortunately, there are many auto insurance companies that will write down in their contracts, or claim in person that they won’t guarantee any auto body repairs unless you go to an approved auto body shop. They’ll have a list of what amounts to company shops, and they’ll claim that those shops are the only shops you can go to if you want the work guaranteed. This can bring the stress level right back up, because those auto body shops may not be preferable for some reason. Maybe they’re too far away. Perhaps they charge too high a price, forcing you to pay more than you can afford even though the auto insurance company is paying for it. Yet you can’t do anything else, because if something should go wrong with the auto body repair, you need to make sure it can get corrected.
This may seem like a terrible situation, and it is. However, it’s a terrible situation that you don’t have to accept. The real truth is that auto insurance companies never guarantee an auto body repair. It doesn’t matter what shop you go to, the auto insurance company simply doesn’t guarantee any repair, period. By law, the auto body shop itself guarantees the repair work.
So why would an auto insurance company claim they won’t guarantee a repair if you don’t go to an approved shop? Simply put, it gives them a captive customer base. It allows them to set up their own auto body repair shops, and ensure that they’re going to have customers for those shops. They can then further increase their profits by encouraging their auto body repair shops to cut corners and push work out as fast as possible. This can result in shoddy workmanship, or repair work that only lasts until right after the guarantee wears off.
If your auto insurance company claims that they won’t guarantee an auto body repair unless you go to one of their approved shops, remember that they’re only half right. It’s true that they won’t guarantee the work if you don’t go to one of their shops. It’s just that they won’t guarantee the work no matter what. So go to the shop that you feel most comfortable with, and don’t let their lies force you to pay more money than you have to.
