Ironically, insurers must understand that though they have gone to great measures to severely limit their payout for repairer services, the Property/Casualty arm of the insurance industry can't continue to exist without shops to repair vehicles. And, for the record, though insurers have put on a great poker face in such insurer-owned shop schemes as Allstate/ Sterling, they have no intention or inclination of expanding any farther into the unprofitable world of collision repair than they need to keep independent repair shops "barefoot and pregnant."

Enough blame to go around

I certainly wouldn't presume to lay all the blame on insurers. Like Judas of old, insurers just hold the moneybag. They don't produce any physical product; their purpose in existing is simply collecting premiums, reimbursing policyholders and claimants when a loss occurs on calculated risk, and making their investors happy. The control that most insurers exert is in their ability to create a monetarily competitive atmosphere that influences shops to pit themselves against each other in various crooked ways. And in this field of control, insurers have become masters. The real culprit, though, the one that has the power to deliver the collision industry into the 21st century, is the shop.

Here's a perfect example of how insurers, behind the scenes, pit certain shops against others: Recently, we got fed up trying to reason on an intelligent level with a certain insurer robot which has been attempting to take our estimates back into the dark ages. Still compliant enough to work for what we consider a reasonable labor rate rather than estimating in dollars (something which very well may soon change), this insurer rep who has admitted to us that his sole motivation for hacking our estimates is promotion in his company, refuses to pay a penny over what we were charging years ago. For the record, other insurers willingly pay up to $6 more per hour than this one. He hacks every line item we write, and refuses to pay for many of the "reasonable and necessary" items needed for a quality repair.

We invited other local shops to join with us in a face-to-face meeting with representatives of this insurer and their local agents (to inform them what their company is doing behind their back, and how this affects their relations with their insureds), and try to create a workable solution - something that would benefit all local shops. But only one other shop seems interested in participating.

One DRP shop we were hoping would join with us in this effort - the one owned by the still active past-president of our state Autobody Craftsman Association - declined, stating he couldn't because this insurer was one of the many DRPs he depends on. Of course, he isn't losing any money from this insurer, since he writes his own estimates, inspection of which is infrequent at best, being their DRP. But every estimate written by non-DRP shops like ours is critically checked by this insurer, and compared to whatever low standards the local DRPs will limbo before they play the funny-time game.

It is past time our shop dropped out of ACA-WA. This past year I dropped out of SCRS, and our many years of membership in ASA is on the ropes in my book, for lack of meaningful support of shops like ours. It sickens me to think of the many thousands of dollars and countless hours of time we've wasted in these so-called repairer associations that have all along encouraged their members to take part in insurer relationships that pit them against those of us who refuse to prostitute ourselves to insurers through DRP contracts. These don't have the best interest of my shop, or even of the true collision industry, at heart.

I will, however, keep my membership in theCCRE (the Coalition for Collision Repair Excellence) (www.theccre.com, 1- 877-700-7743), the only pure, strictly repair-related industry, national coalition of shops in existent. The CCRE has been and is continuing to accomplish things that are turning the tide on the downward spiral of collision repair as usual. If you are fed up with where your industry "leaders" are taking you… or aren't taking you… join up with the CCRE, and take your part with the many other shop owners who are making this business profitable again.

Dick Strom, Modern Collision Rebuild, 9270 Miller Road, NE, Bainbridge Island, Washington 98110; (206) 842-3621; e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it