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January 2012 The year's most |
| As 2012 launches, here’s our annual compendium of some of the most memorable, important, interesting or enlightening quotes heard in the industry during the past 12 months. |
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December 2011 Industry Stories: |
| So much happens in the collision-repair industry that it can be hard to keep up on everything. A few big stories get plenty of attention in the trade press and at association and industry gatherings. But sometimes it’s the lesser-known stories that can have as big an impact on your business. Here are 10 of these stories from recent months that might have flown under your radar amid the day-to-day challenges of running your shop, but that could prove helpful for you to know about. |
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November 2011 Take 'Em to Court: |
| The idea of taking an insurer to court to collect unpaid repair costs or to halt unfair steering or other practices is hardly new. Back in 1977, for example, Oregon shop owner Don Berger won a jury verdict in a lawsuit against Allstate Insurance in an early high-profile steering lawsuit when Berger maintained that the insurer’s first-of-its-kind, direct-repair program was “directing my customers away from my shop and setting up an unfair competition situation.” |
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October 2011 Improving
Databases: |
| Nick Kostakis recalls a part removal and reinstall procedure his shop was conducting on a high-volume car that had a labor time in the estimating system — in fact in all three major estimating systems — that just didn’t seem adequate. “It didn’t seem to factor in all of the other operations that had to take place,” said Kostakis, a New Jersey shop owner and a past national president of the Alliance of Automotive Service Providers (AASP). Kostakis sent an inquiry about the labor time through the Database Enhancement Gateway (DEG), a Web site that enables anyone to submit questions about labor times or operations to any of three estimating systems. |
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September 2011 Stats and Trends: |
| No single stat or trend can serve as a perfect measure or forecast of what the collision industry can expect in the coming months or year. But keeping an eye on a variety of numbers — some driven by shops, others by trends outside the industry — can prove to be a bit of a crystal ball for what lies ahead. |
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August 2011 Standards or Status Quo:
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| Ask those in the industry about “repair standards,” and a surprising number of the comments end with a question mark rather than a period: — Who would develop the standards, and on what would they be based? — How would they be codified, communicated, and enforced? — Can the whole process be funded and handled in a way that prevents even the appearance of “special-interests” influencing the standards? |
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