You would think it would be a cut and dry answer for an accurate auto body collision repair time, but there are many factors that have to be considered including:
- Your insurance company. They need to give us approval. Sometimes it take a day – sometimes it’s several days. This is beyond our control.
- We can only see the visible damage. Once we start removing parts, we may f ind other internal damage.
- Is it a minor accident? or a major one?
- The type of car you have can make a difference. Older parts are harder to locate. Foreign cars parts, sports cars or a specialty vehicle may take longer to receive the replacement part.
How does Auto Body Repair Work?
It all starts with an estimate. You bring your car in. We provide an estimate and send it off for approval to your insurance company. In order to get your car fixed as soon as possible, we pre-order the parts we know are needed -even before the approval comes in- so that we’re ready to go.
Once we get the insurance approval and you drop off your car, we disassemble it and look for further damage. Most often there is additional damage. Now, we have to re-submit for a another approval (supplement) from the insurance company. So, even if we pre-ordered parts, we have to do another order for the supplement parts. Once we get approval from both you and the insurance company for that, we’re ready to start. This all takes another day or two.
Finally, if you have a vehicle with alot of advanced electronic features, once we put it all together, we have to do an electronic re-calibration to reset the electronics in the bumper for back up cameras, lane warning system, etc.
So, as you can see, even just a simple bumper repair or replacement that “should” to take 1-3 days in the past, depending on your make/model and electronics can in reality take 3-5 days or longer.
What adds time to an auto body repair?
1. Part Availability.
At St Laurent, we try and pre-order parts while waiting for the insurance approval. Most parts are available within 1- 2 days, but not always. Sometimes a part can be on back-order and take weeks.
2. Industry Standard Repair Time We use an industry standard time guideline to prepare your estimate so it’s the most realistic timeframe as possible.
3. Complexity of the Vehicle Body Repair. The type of repair can greatly influence how long the job may take. If a job has structural repair it needs a special piece of equipment to get it done correctly and this can add quite a bit of time.
Like many things these days, the electronics are now more complicated and add additional time to the repair process. Factory scan tools then run diagnostics to insure everything is communicating.
4.Insurance Company Approval for Auto Body Repair. At St. Laurent Collision Center our shop is electronically connected to insurance company’s. Each insurance company has their own process for verifying and approving the repair. If they can do it with photos the response time is fairly quick. Sometimes, they require an onsite review which can add days to the approval cycle. We try to avoid this as much as possible by sending accurate, clear photos.
5.Quality Control Check. At St Laurent the quality of our work stands out. As an ICar certified center, we provide continuous training for performance standards and new technology techniques. Every vehicle is double checked before we authorize a release back to you.
We will do everything we can to get your car back to you as quickly as possible, but as you can see, there are a lot of variables that are hard to control. Therefore, we make sure we keep you informed via phone, text or email on what your car status is.
At St Laurent Collision Center in Nashua New Hampshire we take pride in every vehicle that leaves our shop and we always go the extra mile for each and every customer that entrusts us with their repair. Come see us the next time you need an auto body repair.
http://www.stlaurentautobody.com – 603-882-6822
