By Mike Davey
Hamilton, Ontario — January 24, 2017 — We’ve heard repeatedly that the best course of action is to always check the OEM repair procedures. But how many shops are actually doing it? According to the results of our latest survey, the majority of shops check while performing structural repairs, but only about a quarter of respondents check them for every repair. The numbers are even lower when it comes to writing estimates.
The 2017 OEM Repair Procedures Survey asked respondents to indicate how often they checked the procedures both in preparing estimates and during the repair process itself. Our next survey focuses on measuring systems and technology. Please make sure to take two minutes and fill out that survey here. The results from that survey will be available on collisionrepairmag.com on February 1, 2017
The majority of Collision Repair magazine’s readers are shop owners and managers, so it’s no surprise that the majority of our respondents (60 percent) fall into that category. However, this particular survey also had a larger than usual percentage of responses from collision repair executives employed with banners, networks or chains (20 percent). It seems reasonable to assume that this is a topic of great interest at the top levels of the collision business.
The remainder of the survey responses came from technicians (7 percent) and others (13 percent). The “others” were roughly evenly split between insurers and suppliers to the collision repair industry.
The meat of the survey starts by asking how often OEM repair procedures are consulted while preparing an estimate. The most common response was “Most of the time,” drawing about 42 percent of the responses. It was followed by “Sometimes” at 33 percent. About 17 percent of our respondents indicated that they “Always” checked OEM repair procedures while performing an estimate. Just 8 percent of respondents indicated they “Never” check the procedures while writing estimates.
Those numbers are just for writing estimates. The numbers climb significantly when discussing the repair process itself. Of our survey respondents, 25 percent “Always” check the OEM procedures while performing repairs. A further 58 percent check the procedures any time they have to perform a structural repair, followed by 17 percent who check for “Some structural repairs.”
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Finally, we turn to how the information is accessed. Alldata was clearly the most popular choice, with 35 percent of our respondents indicating it was the source they accessed most often. Mitchell’s TechAdvisor followed with 26 percent. OEM subscriptions followed closely with 22 percent and I-CAR’s Repairability Technical Support (RTS) portal garnered 17 percent of the total responses.
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| The chart above highlights where survey respondents turn to most frequently when {source}<br/>{/source}seeking information on OEM repair procedures. |
We’ll close with a comment left by one of the survey participants. As always, these comments are anonymous and appear with only minimal editing from us.
“Repairing the vehicle is all about making it safe and to OEM specs. Why make it a cost and difficult to access proper OEM procedures and specs? If the cost of obtaining OEM info was covered, more people would look up and know the proper procedures and specs. There are a lot of shops and techs repairing to what they think is right and not to OEM standards just because of not getting easy free access to OEM specs and standards. Remember, it’s about providing the customer with a safe vehicle.”
Make sure to check out our next survey on measuring technology at this link, and watch for the results next week!
