Q & A | How To Handle Body Shop Warranty Claims

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Welcome everybody to your Friday drive by. This is where we answer your questions. The questions that are keeping you from being the best version of yourself, that keep you up at night, make you do things that you shouldn't do. Whatever it is, we're here to help you with that. The phone number is 8333 ask SDR. That's 8333, ask SDR. And if we play your question on the big show, we will send you out a swag bag. Parts old stuff is snuck into the swag bags too. There's fun stuff. Chris, Joan is here. And Hoagie, our special guest.

What's up everybody?

Let's get to the first question.

Hi there. Hey, Chris. My name is Robert Hoy calling. I'm a service director at a Chrysler dealership. My question regarding dealerships for the body shop. So who do you think should handle warranty claims coming out of the body shop? The body shop estimators or the warranty administrator? In more detail, I believe that body shop personnel should write an estimate to properly repair the warranty concern while supplying all needed pictures and documentation to the warranty administrator. Then the administrator gains approval with the exact dollar amount body shop performs repair and warranty administrator submits claim and encloses repair order to balance the amount of the paid claim.

I've been fighting this issue for quite some time now.

Probably in the midst of going to lose a job because I'm fighting a service manager who believes that she's always right and that we should allow estimators to close these orders. And to me that's like saying, okay, well, let's let a used car manager close all of his recon repair orders to fit his needs, if you will. Just like an estimate is going to go, I'm gonna, I'll close this thing and you know, whatever dollars I want to close to that and hopefully you guys get it. So that's my question. Hopefully you get an answer for me. I appreciate you. I was at one of your classes in LA downtown some years back. So it's good to talk to you again and hopefully I hear something back. Thanks, bye.

I mean, first of all, we want to hire that service manager. If she knows everything, we need somebody like that around.

We've been waiting.

I feel like people around here don't know enough. Like they know like a little bit of all the knowledge out there. We need somebody who knows everything. We could have our own chat GPT or whatever. Right. Can you imagine how efficient we'd be if we had somebody who Knew everything.

That'd be great.

Oh my God. I spend so much time just trying to remember basic stuff. It'd be the greatest.

Where am I?

If she could just tell the future.

Tell me when the Seahawks are going to win the Super Bowl. I'll go to Vegas right now and lay down. I think that the thing that he is saying and we're going to have to do some assumptions because we don't have them here to ask. Right. Is that in the service department.

We close out a warranty ro. It goes on a warranty schedule.

Yeah.

And then the warranty administrator claims it and if there's an adjustment, then the adjustment is made back, Right?

Yeah. So service eats it is what I think I heard. Like. So body shop does the estimate and they basically put whatever they down for the op for the estimate goes on the schedule. If the warranty miniature can't get the whole thing, then they still. The body shop still gets paid. But there's a thing where we're eating stuff and we.

So not only does the manager know everything, she's smart.

And it seems she's a. She's a for profit kind of person.

And it seems fella's gonna take the blame for it. Yeah.

Yeah. I would just have to. I would have to agree with you, Robert. If the. If there are issue, I guess there's two ways to do it. One is the way that you're describing. The other way is to actually charge them back when there is some sort of discrepancy. The hard part about. About that though is like let's say the tech flags three hours more than he's supposed to and you gotta back flag that tech. That's a hard thing to do. Right. And so it's always harder to correct it in the rear view mirror than it is just do it right up front. So I would say there's got to be a way to have the warranty administrator involved way earlier.

Yeah.

They don't have to necessarily claim it, but they could be involved way earlier.

Yeah. So I don't know if this is going too far into the weeds, but.

I was also how many, how many warranty jobs are getting done by body shops without the manufacturer okaying it? Because we'd be talking about rust or some sort of flaw thing.

Some recalls, you know, there's recalls and service campaigns, but that'd be a straight line for something.

Yeah. With a really straight requirement of payment. Right. So how it worked with me is car comes in. Both myself and my warranty admin went out and did an inspection. And then we determined it was a warrantable condition. And then warranty admin went back and they did all the op codes, the paint mix, all that other stuff. Like the. My system was that the car went to the body shop with the here's what it pays and pretty, pretty straight. Yeah. And if I always said to the body shop, totally up to you. If you don't feel like this is fair, it doesn't work, you don't have to do the job. But if you're gonna be my body shop, there's good ones that I'll send to you and then there's gonna be some like this. And I never had an issue with the body shop where they're like, well, I love your customer work, but your warranty work sucks. Where they just kind of accepted that it was a give and take. Almost like when you're handing a tech and noise concern and then you hand him a four wheel brake job. It's the same kind of thing. But there was never a question of what the bill was gonna be.

So I think the warranty administrator should be involved right up front and they should okay it before it gets closed because they'll have a general sense on what they can claim and what is there. But I think I would side with your way of thinking. And I think if there's discrepancies, it's just twice the work for everybody. So it behooves everybody to get it right because, you know, the b. The manager doesn't want to back flag text and to, you know, take a, you know, some sort of chargeback. It's better just to do it up front for everybody. It hurts morale. So I think I agree with his thinking.

Yeah, I think so. I think I agree. I, I agree. I think you're right. This may not be the advice that you're looking for here necessarily, but also.

You know, I've watched many people die on the sword of. I was right. Right. So one thing I would back up from that situation. Like I said, I know this may not be the, the quick answer you're looking for because I don't, I don't disagree with it at all. However, you know, I wouldn't be near as worried about being right. I know you're, you got a service manager, you feel like that has to always be right. But sometimes in those situations, I would offer, you know, a couple solutions if I'm taking this situation, you know, to them to try and correct it. Make sure you go with a solution. Right.

And, and Maybe package it that it benefits her.

Yeah, exactly. Just anything you can do. So in these situations, a lot of times, honestly, I get asked this one thing and then a trick I learned from Chris is whoever they're talking about trying to convince, you know, I'll ask that person. So in your situation, your service manager, what's her significant other's name, what's her kid's name, what's, you know, what's something about them? How well do you know them? So a lot of times working on the relationships around you, I completely understand. Sometimes it's as much managing up and, and some of those things. But, you know, there's an opportunity to be a leader in these situations, even if you're not the one in charge.

That's great. That's really good advice. Well, thanks for the question. We'll hit you up and get your info to send out your swag bag. Remember the numbers 8333-ASK SDR. We hope everybody has a good weekend and we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to Offers Do Chris Collins inc. Dot com. Now that's Offers Chris Collins inc Dot com. I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.