Here’s some of what was said around the industry last year
By John Yoswick
As the nation took steps to put the pandemic in the rear view mirror this past year, discussions within the industry refocused from COVID-19 cleaning of vehicles and “touchless claims” back to OEM repair procedures and certifications, the technician shortage, parts challenges, and shop-insurer relations. Here is this year’s collection of some of the most important, interesting or entertaining quotes heard within the collision industry over the past 12 months.
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“An employee’s wife has a Honda she gets serviced at the dealership, and she always asks them where they’d recommend she get a dent repaired, and they’d always told her about our shop. The last time they said [another shop name], and that’s what started us checking this out. That shop was added two months ago, and we’ve not had any work [through the program] since. We are right in the middle of our ProFirst renewal, and Honda kept this information to themselves.”
— A West Coast collision repairer frustrated in January to discover that Honda had added “a bunch of shops” in his market to its certification program, including one less than a mile from one his shops had previously seen one or two Honda jobs a week through the program
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“We are currently technically full in terms of the number [of shops] we wanted to have in our certification program. But we will add shops as needed based on geographical and units-in-operation conditions. We do not have a specific radius of how close a [certified] shop can be to another one. We’re going to try not to put one right across the street from another, but I can tell you that I have actually seen four certified shops in a two-block area. But that’s because in the metro area, that’s where they put all the body shops. So we will have situations like that.”
— Dane Rounkles, manager of wholesale collision parts for American Honda, speaking in August as the automaker began transitioning ProFirst shops to its new “Honda and Acura Certified Collision” program
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“I would say of the 30-some employees we have, 80 percent have been affected in one way or another [by COVID-10]. Either infected or affected. Whether it be themselves or their loved ones, and so they…
