Auto Body Shops Struggle To Control Access To, Use of Estimate Data

By John Yoswick Autobody News

Denise Koukal, chief information officer for the LaMettry’s Collision chain in Minnesota, said her company, like others, has had a customer upset his vehicle repair generated an entry on a vehicle history report.

“We got a phone call as he was preparing to sell his vehicle at an auction and noticed that this had been reported to a third-party vehicle history report,” Koukal said during a data access and privacy discussion at the Collision Industry Conference history report,” she said. “This customer was a repeat customer for us. We had done five repairs for him. We have done none since.”

Start of Estimate Enough to Send Out Data

Another panelist, New Mexico shop owner Scott Benavidez, said he has been working since 2016 to track down how some estimate data from his shop has made it to vehicle history reports He shared a flowchart similar to Koukal’s, but the estimate it tracks was not a customer-pay job but one involving an insurance company.

“As repairers know, we get information every day that says, ‘Add this vendor, add this vendor,’ so that they can continually look for the least expensive part,” Benavidez said. “That absolutely opens it up to people that I didn’t even invite….as a vendor, but now are in my platform because of the insurer relationship.”

Koukal agreed, noting insurer and automaker programs can similarly require the use of different customer satisfaction indexing services, “exposing that data to many more places.”

“It’s really hard to say how frequently it happens because we don’t usually hear about it until a customer goes to sell or trade in their vehicle,” Koukal said. “There’s probably been about 10 times that we’ve been called about it, so we difference,” she said. “But the reality is [the agreements] are more of a punitive thing—only if we find out that something has happened—than something on the front-end that stops the data from going out.”

Koukal said her company falls between Benavidez’s and Caliber in terms of size, and has EULAs with some of its vendors but not others. She agrees with Denison’s view that such agreements have limited value.

(CIC) in November. “I’m sure many of you have had the conversation about ‘Why did you report my repair? Now it’s going to financially impact me with the sale of my vehicle.’ We didn’t report it, but we don’t know who did either. So it’s a very difficult conversation to have with a customer.”

Koukal shared a flowchart tracing everywhere data related to that repair—a customer-pay job—went from the shop, including to three different parts procurements systems that each searched for parts from multiple vendors; thirdparty scheduling and customer service indexing services; OEM repair procedure sources; an aftermarket scan tool system; a materials invoicing system; and an aftermarket clips and fasteners tracking system.

Koukal said other common places the data is sent—though not for this particular repair—include a rental management system, sublet sources and an online estimating program.

There was no way of knowing, Koukal said, how in all that data flow the repair made it to the vehicle history report. She said both her company and the customer asked to have it removed from the report for the vehicle.

“To my knowledge, the accident was never removed from the vehicle

Benavidez said once last year, he had entered about the first 20 lines of an estimate before he got called away to do other things.

“I came back to that estimate about an hour or two later,” he said.

“As I went through my emails, I had received one from Wheels America that said, ‘Hey, we have your wheel’ for that particular vehicle. I hadn’t locked the estimate. I had never done anything with that estimate other than start it. Wheels America is someone I’ve never done business know it’s happened. But there’s probably a lot we don’t know about.”

Ashley Denison, chief information officer for the Caliber Collision chain, agreed, noting the company’s CEO even came to her about tracking down the issue because the repair of his own daughter’s car made it onto the vehicle’s CARFAX report.

Denison said Caliber has resources to try to address the issue, but she sees the need for an industry solution because if it happens to any shop, “it happens to all of us, it’s a knock on the industry.”

She said listening to what Benavidez as the owner of a single shop has done trying to track the problem down, she was “blown away by how much as an operator he had to know about all this,” when he should be focused on the quality repairs and customer service everyone wants from shops.

“So how do we as an industry begin to flip that,” Denison asked rhetorically.

Putting Things in Writing

Benavidez said he worked with the Automotive Service Association years ago to create an “end-user licensing agreement” (EULA) shops could require vendors to sign related to their use of the shop’s data.

“In order to do anything about them, you have to know where that data was shared and who shared that data,” Koukal said. “You’d also need to take it to a court of law in order to have anything done with it. I don’t think everyone is in a position to do that, nor do they want to do that. So I don’t know how much value [the EULAs] have.”

The panel was asked if some sort of government regulation, similar to those designed to protect patient information in the medical field, was the answer. Denison said that certainly would create compliance, with. They were put in there by the insurance company. And I had no idea it was going to them.”

The panelists all agreed it’s difficult to know how often a shop’s data related to a repair somehow makes its way onto a vehicle history report.

“But I have yet to get one company to sign that,” Benavidez said. “I think the reason for that is even they don’t always know where [the data] is going. I’ve brought it up numerous times, but I’ve had zero response in getting anybody to sign that EULA.”

Denison said Caliber does have EULAs in place with its vendors.

“I think this is where size and scale makes a little bit of a

“But I absolutely believe that as an industry we can solve the problem without the government getting involved.”

In the meantime, Koukal and Denison each said their companies added verbiage to their repair authorization indicating the customer allows the shop to access and share vehicle data with third-parties as relevant to the repair of the vehicle.

“My concern is: Do they read it and understand what that actually means,” Denison said, acknowledging that if she knew little about the industry and was getting her car repaired, she would just check the boxes as necessary and sign the form.

Benavidez said his similar concern led him to create a second authorization related to the use of their vehicle data from scans.

“It’s really helped us with the consumer to gain their trust,” Benavidez said.

Scoggin-Dickey Chevrolet Buick

5901 Spur 327 › Lubbock, TX 79424

Mon-Fri: 7:30 - 6:30 • Sat: 8:30 - 12:30

Choose

Parts Toll Free: 800-888-4251

Parts Local: 806-798-4013

Competitive Wholesale Prices

Large Inventory of Subaru OEM Parts

Scoggin-Dickey ISUZU

5901 Spur 327 › Lubbock, TX 79424

Mon-Fri: 7:30 - 6:30 • Sat: 8:30 - 12:30

Parts Toll Free: 800-888-4251

Parts Local: 806-798-4013

Scoggin-Dickey Subaru

5901 Spur 327 › Lubbock, TX 79424

Mon-Fri: 7:30 - 6:30 • Sat: 8:30 - 12:30

Parts Toll Free: 800-888-4251

Parts Local: 806-798-4013

By Ed Attanasio Autobody News

Chris Slack manages a parts department at Ivan Gandrud Chevrolet in Green Bay, WI, that employs 30 people, including eight counter people and three service technicians.

part of Michigan with a fleet of 18 trucks.

Gandrud has been exhibiting at SEMA for the past four years, after attending it the four years before that. Autobody News asked him about the show and its impact on his business.

Q: What were the central issues that shops and parts suppliers were dealing with in 2022?

performance and collision customers at the show so that is nice also.

Q: How has SEMA changed since your first show?

A: I think there will be fewer collision shops and also fewer wholesale parts dealers.

The department carries an inventory of approximately $5.5 million, consisting of mechanical, collision and performance parts, and is an authorized Mopar dealer that sells genuine Mopar parts online. With 30-plus years of experience under his belt, Slack is succeeding in a very competitive marketplace. He’s well-known for being one of GM’s largest parts operations in the country, serving all of Wisconsin and

A: We have been dealing with a bunch of issues but the biggest is backordered parts. So many parts are unavailable from the manufacturer. We have been trying to make it seamless by buying parts for our customers from other dealers across the country. We have bought more parts from other dealers than ever before, but if that’s what it takes to get a car finished and out of our customer’s shop, then that’s what we have to do.

Q: Do you see value in a show like SEMA for dealer parts suppliers?

A: SEMA is a great show for us because we have a large Chevrolet Performance parts business. We see a lot of our

A: I think SEMA has changed from a performance show to a more complete automotive show. Now even the service manager and the collision shop manager should attend and visit all the vendors and attend training.

Q: Do you think parts availability will improve significantly in 2023?

A: No, maybe by the end of 2023, availability is improving but very, very slowly.

Those are definitely the three top concerns. We need a bigger facility because we need more inventory which means more people and more delivery drivers. We have had to cut back on our delivery area because we don’t have time to deliver to all our customers.

Q: What will your sector look like in 2025?

The parts dealers are under a lot of pressure right now. Our discounts from the manufacturers have dropped because of availability— many parts can no longer be ordered at a truckload discount but instead we have to special order it one at a time to get the part at a much lower discount. Delivery expenses have gone up, personal costs have gone up.

But as the large MSOs buy up all the collision shops, they are demanding bigger discounts. That’s a business model that doesn’t work. The collision shops should instead work on getting a higher labor rate from the businesses that control that.

Q:If a young person was going to enter this industry, what would you tell them?

A:Now is a great time to get into the parts and collision business. Demand for qualified people has never been higher. Every collision shop and wholesale parts department in the state is hiring right now.

CARFAX Warns Odometer Rollbacks on the Rise

Alarming new numbers from CARFAX show odometer rollbacks are on the rise nationwide.

More than 1.9 million vehicles on the road have had their odometer rolled back—a 7% increase from the previous year.

Consumers lose an average of $4,000 in value from unknowingly buying a rolled back car, and that doesn’t include unexpected maintenance costs.

“Many people think odometer fraud disappeared with the invention of digital odometers,” said Emilie Voss, public relations director for CARFAX. “But that couldn’t be further from the truth. We’re still seeing the number of vehicles on the road with a rolled back odometer rise year-over-year. It l CONTINUED FROM COVER

CARSTAR Fort Collins

Each vehicle receives a colored flag denoting the insurer for the vehicle, which gives technicians a quick reference for the repair standards for that vehicle. This was followed by a traffic system—that soon will include stop lights in each repair bay—that shows green for completed, yellow for on-track and red for problems. This serves as a visual cue for which vehicles need attention to stay on track for cycle time and customer satisfaction.

“Everything at CARSTAR Fort Collins is designed with the technician in mind to ensure they have the resources they need to repair vehicles with the highest quality and on time,” said Balistreri, who began his career at Enterprise, powered by CCC Intelligent Solutions. The dashboard tracks all of the key performance indicators in real-time, on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis. It includes a virtual map of the facility, and each car being repaired is reflected on-screen. Technicians ready to install them and that they are set to move the vehicle on to the next step. At first, it was a bit of a new mindset for the technicians, but now we have complete buy-in. They can see the direct impact of their work on our overall productivity, and this is very motivating for everyone.” are trained on the system and responsible for updating their

With this system in place, Balistreri said the facility now focuses on CARSTAR’s “Five S System,” which outlines steps of straightening, shining, systemizing, sustaining and supporting. This has led CARSTAR Fort Collins to deliver cycle times two days shorter than the Colorado state average.

“I never imagined myself being the general manager of a multi-million-dollar facility, but with Doug’s leadership and the CARSTAR system, I’ve been able to grow in this job and constantly learn new skills,” he added. “I can’t