There are many “in-network” auto body shops, which get referrals from insurance companies in exchange for negotiated rates. The industry’s term for this is Direct Repair Program (DRP).

TIL. But there's a vibrant and competitive market for auto repairs in general. In-network shops can't be more expensive than out-of-network shops. There's no "certificate of need" system that can block the starting of new auto shops.[1]

Auto repair costs are capped at the value of the vehicle. There isn't a stream of indigent customers coming in for emergency repair that have to be subsidized by everyone else. There's far more visibility into risks - insurers have access to your driving history and can refuse to offer coverage based on it. You can volunteer even more information to lower your rates - from credit history, marital status, educational level, all the way up to installing a device on your car's OBD port to monitor your driving habits.

In short, auto insurance and repair really isn't anything like healthcare.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need

> In-network shops can't be more expensive than out-of-network shops.

"My insurance told me to go to X shop, which was 3x as expensive as this other shop and was going to take two weeks to repair my window." -my roommate

It is illegal in the United States for the insurance agency to dictate which shop does the repairs.

Sure, but they can say, this is the shop we will pay ourselves, or you can go somewhere else and we'll cut you a check. If you need the repairs done faster than they cut checks and don't have cash on hand, it's a strong incentive.

Which is why people should have savings and learn some life skills like basic auto repair. Body work and paint I can't do myself, but that's mostly cosmetic (look at the number of beat shitboxes rolling around in the US). But you should be able to get a car into running order or acquire a rental vehicle while you wait for the check. Rental vehicles are usually at preferred rates when associated to an insurer and depending on the policy are covered.

Yep, the only item they can dictate is where the estimate is done.

Also there is less concern with an auto “death panel” where cost of repair exceeds replacement value. I can’t imagine Aetna offering you $50k to just die already...

Someone bumped my rear last year and their insurance company had me take the car to a body shop.. to be re-painted. I don't know what final cost was but I heard an estimate that put it at roughly the value of a new bumper. Of course buying a new bumper and installing it would be a much quicker & simpler job than sanding and painting an old bumper (this is Honda btw, replacement bumpers come pre-painted), but it wouldn't allow the body shop to make as much profit.

Even though the new bumper is factory painted it doesn't necessarily mean that the new bumper and old colour will match 1:1 -> they might have to paint the new bumper regardless which is why it might be preferable to just fix the existing one.

In fact all the manufacturers I've ever worked with send you an unpainted bumper when you order a new one(or any body panel really) and it has to be painted before being fitted, specifically for the reason you mentioned. A good body shop will match the paint that's actually on your vehicle.

In my experience honda parts do match 1:1 and I don't think they'd waste the effort on maintaining a stock of pre-painted parts if the receiving body shop was going to have to paint it anyway.

Depends how old your car is and how much UV damage the current paint has. New cars match in pretty well, older cars generally need some touch up.

So Honda has got around uv from the sun fading paint?

Nah, they pre-fade them for you.

> I'd like a 1995 Civic bumper, dark blue, with UV Fading to match 10 in-garage years and 10 out, but indirect sunlight. Please.

If the final price of repairing the bumper was the same (or nearly same) as buying and installing a new bumper, why do you say the former has a higher profit margin? Surely it's more profitable to spend fewer hours and earn the same revenue - as they would do by installing a new bumper?

It’s a matter of parts vs labor cost. For the shop, the labor cost is already sunk: they’re paying their mechanics to be present whether or not they’re actively working on a job. The replacement bumper is an expensive part that requires little labor, and so doesn’t offset the shop’s previous investment in labor contracts as much as the repair work would.

Also, mechanics in the US usually charge book time instead of actual work time to customers: you pay for the hours that the manual says the job should take regardless of how fast or slow the mechanic actually is. So, more efficient mechanics prefer labor-heavy jobs because working faster than average effectively brings in a bonus.

>: they’re paying their mechanics to be present whether or not they’re actively working on a job.

Usually this is not the case. Google "flat rate pay", it is the norm for automotive shops. As you get into more specialty stuff (commercial truck and heavy equipment repair, pure body and paint work) hourly pay is more common but still not the norm.

>Also, mechanics in the US usually charge book time instead of actual work time to customers: you pay for the hours that the manual says the job should take regardless of how fast or slow the mechanic actually is. So, more efficient mechanics prefer labor-heavy jobs because working faster than average effectively brings in a bonus.

This is correct but what you're missing is that because of how flat rate pay works the shop rate is XX and the tech gets YY of that so the incentive for both the shop and the tech is to work as fast as possible without doing so bad a job that the customer comes back telling you to fix it.

It's also worth pointing out that labor and parts pricing schemes is one of the back end things shops tweak in order to differentiate themselves and/or obtain competitive advantage so that adds a whole 'nother layer of incentives on top of the incentives provided by flat rate pay.

Parts markups schemes (if any) vary wildly from shop to shop. Some shops have a couple suppliers and order everything for them. Some shops stack up two weeks of work and have the service writer spend their afternoon ordering stuff through the same eCommerce channels consumers use. Some shops try not to stack up future work, have accounts with all the local parts stores and get stuff delivered same day. Some shops vary the parts markup by part class (e.g. one markup for body parts and a different markup for brake parts). Some shops charge the customer cost and make their money on labor to incentivize customers to splurge for "while you're in there" type repairs (e.g. rotors to go with pads).

Some shops proudly discount the labor (lower shop rate) and try to make it up on parts.

Labor cost to the shop also varies by tech. The guy who can re spray a bumper is gonna make a higher fraction of the shop labor rate than the guy who can only install a bumper cover.

The service writer can also have their pay tied to incentives to sell parts, or maybe a class of parts, or maybe labor, etc. etc.

Depending on the specifics of the particular shop slapping on pre-painted bumper covers may very well make the same amount of money as a proper re-spray. There's so much variation it's hard to generalize.

OK, maybe I'm coming at this the wrong way.

> For the shop, the labor cost is already sunk.

For me this means - "labor hours are constrained, so I should spend them wisely". If I wanted to buy more labor hours, I have to hire a new person and pay more money. That means preferring jobs where the markup is on non-labor things i.e. new parts. As long as my job pipeline is full and my employees are at 100% utilization, preferring less labor-intensive jobs will drive greater profits. Because I can complete more jobs overall, leading to more revenue.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that the markup on labor is higher than the markup on parts. But if you're betting on higher profits by selling more labor hours, then you're also constrained by physical space, your ability to hire labor and pay a competitive wage, the risk of a downturn etc. It's almost like software consulting vs software products. Selling products is always going to be more scalable and profitable.

Is my logic wrong somewhere?

Your reasoning looks right if your employees actually are at 100% utilization. If they’re not, however, the marginal cost to the shop of labor is 0. (1) Thus, it’s better to prefer the option that lets you charge more labor hours when you’re light on jobs.

For most brick-and-mortar shops, it sustainability, not scalability, that dominates. If you’re tooled up assuming the market will stay hot, you’ll struggle when the inevitable downturn comes. On the other hand, if you can stay break even at 50% of normal volume, you’ve got a chance to ride through a recession with your business intact.

The comparison to software breaks down when you’re talking about products, because the shop is a reseller; there’s a pretty hard limit to the amount of retail markup the market will bear before competitors crop up.

(1) As it turns out, this isn’t completely true; see the other reply.

You can buy the consumables for a paint job for a few dozen bucks, and then charge for a day or two of labor. You make 800 eur. Selling labor is how your body shop makes money.

Or you can buy a new bumper for 600 eur, charge a thin margin on it, and then add maybe one hour of labor. Most of what you charge goes to Honda, you make maybe 150 eur, and then hope the next job comes soon so that your tools and people don't sit idle for too long.

You also have to pay for the working space. The reason why paint jobs cost so much has more to do with the lengthy setup than the actual labor or consumables. You need to maintain a specific temperature. You must detach the painted parts and tape them. There are minimum volumes of paint you have to use before you can mix them. This is why painting one part is so expensive. Painting three bumpers at once is much cheaper but nobody wrecks 3 bumpers at once.

How is "lengthy setup" not labour?

Yeah, selling labor makes sense if you're short on jobs. If your order pipeline is full it makes more sense to sell marked-up parts and use less labor.

Insurance companies don't dictate 'preferred repairers' where you live?

Their preferred shops are to be completely disregarded. You should not only disregard them, but also make a point of not using them. If you use their “preferred” shop, you are not the customer, the insurance company is. There’s no benefit to you whatsoever, and they still have to pay regardless.

Preferred does not mean mandatory. It is illegal for an insurance company to require you to use their repair shop.

No but some (UK insurers at least) write into the policy that you pay a lesser excess if you use one of their preferred garages

Yep, same in Australia (at least last time I made an insurance claim, which was something like 15 years ago).

I have liability-only insurance, so I really don't know.

That's an odd comment to be downvoted over.