Insurance Repairs
Insurance Repairs At Elite CC
The vast majority of repairs we work on are insurance repairs. This means that an insurance company pays for the work we do on your vehicle.
While other auto body shops kowtow to the insurance companies’ whims at the expense of you so they can maximize their profits, we take a different approach at Elite.
How are we different?
At Elite Collision Center, we have fought tooth and nail on every single repair we have ever done to serve the real customer.
YOU.
We are not here to serve the insurance company masters. We are here to make sure you get everything you have paid for and everything you are owed by your insurance policy.
We will accept nothing less. When you hire us, we are your advocate – your protector and champion.
Companies we work with and previous repair jobs:
Here at Elite Collision Center, we work ONLY FOR YOU, our customers.
What does that mean?
The Short Answer:
We will advocate for our most important client-you. The shop(s) that your insurance company is trying to send you to are advocating for their most important client- the insurance company. We offer a “set it and forget it” approach for our clients. Just get us your Claim number and we will set you up with a rental car (if applicable) and make most all the headaches from the insurance and the repair process disappear……….. We accept all insurance companies, but we advocate for our clients and represent their best interest when dealing with the insurance company. We don’t rely on Insurance network referrals, so we can be 100% focused on making our your best interests our sole focus, not keeping insurance partners happy- as network shops must do. Since we don’t have to maintain a direct insurance partnership we have the ability to follow all OEM repair procedures and can push for original replacement parts.
The Long Answer
Our focus is fixing cars correctly and making our clients happy. To do this we often take on the role as advocate or expert consultant for our clients. Over the years the insurance companies have tried to make the process of getting your car fixed much more complicated than it needs to be or used to be. Today if you call your insurance claims department and report a claim the claim representative immediately offers you a few (or in the case of GEICO or PROGRESSIVE one) shop(s) in the area that offer an “enhanced” repair experience. These network shops are getting lots of referrals in exchange for doing the repairs as cheaply as possible. The way their programs work is the cheaper and faster they can fix them the more referrals they get.
We have been very successful growing our business organically over the last 10 years. by meeting or exceeding expectations and standing behind our repairs as long as clients own their vehicles. Our clients word-of-mouth referrals and repeat customers have kept us growing as a business since our inception in 2003. Over the years we have partnered up with multiple local dealerships that refer us their clients because of our high quality repairs and our focus on making every single customer feel important. We have been able to do this because we focus on total customer satisfaction. Even though we do accept all insurance carriers polices, we don’t receive Insurance companies In-network referrals. We don’t believe in the insurance network program, we believe in doing the correct repair that is undetectable by professionals not just the clients because most clients are usually not experts in what a car should look like after a repair. To make the highest quality repairs you must use the correct processes as outlined by the original vehicle manufacturer and use the best parts available also from the original manufacturer. We strive to not only make your vehicles repairs as seamless and perfect as possible, but to make your personal legwork as minimal and easy as possible. We take great pride in offering unmatched customer service. We offer free pick up and delivery of yourself or your vehicle. We have picked up or delivered from Monterey, to Gilroy, to Palo Alto and just about everywhere in between.
Although, we accept all insurance companies policies, we aren’t a “partner” or “preferred network shop” with any insurance company. By not partnering or being part of their preferred network we only answer to you, our clients, which means we have a direct advantage over the preferred network shops. Preferred network shops have a strict protocol enforced by the insurance companies that they partner with.
Disadvantages they may have are listed below:
- In a network shop setting keeping cost down, cycle time, and profit are all more important than quality of your vehicles repair.
- In network shops find and use alternate (aftermarket) parts on vehicles over one model year old.
- Many Insurance companies have a report card or audit for each repair where they are judged on panel repair vs replacement decisions and parts available vs. parts purchased. If they score too low on their audits they are in jeopardy of losing the account. Do you think you are going to get the most thorough repair if it can cost them the account that sends them 250-400 cars a year? I think not.
- They must meet a repair timeline if not they must pay the rental bill — This sounds good for the consumer however, the repair process is not always straight forward and while we do everything in our power to repair your vehicle in a timely manner many repairs take longer to finish correctly than anticipated. As a network shop there is little to no exception for repairs running over days allowed which puts technicians in a frantic rush where often all repairs are not done correctly or done at all. A client should realize that on a large several day to multiple week repair, what is seen on the outside is only a small portion of what is on the repair order, and the safety and structural items are the items you cannot see from the outside. What happens whey they find a buckle in the frame rail that wasn’t apparent before the car was taken apart? Replacing a frame rail usually adds 10-14 days with a reduced rate and paying employees flat rate the shop cant afford to replace the frame rail. The rental bill will cost more than the profit over those 14 days. These are the issues the network shops run into and in many cases the client will never see the damage so they will put it back together without fixing it.
- In network shops agree to lower rates for labor, materials and parts therefore they have to make profit based on volume which means their business is based on keeping the their network insurance companies happy.