Article
Body Shops Pressured to Hide Frame Damage on Repair Orders
Repair orders and estimates don’t always spell out structural or frame work, and that matters later when you sell the vehicle or claim diminished value. Here is what to look for on your repair paperwork and what to ask the body shop before you pick up the car.
Published · Updated · Reviewed by Monica Fisher · 2 min read
Client’s Experience Reveals Insurance Company Tactic to Avoid Paying Diminished Value
Our clients have shared some fascinating stories of their experiences with collision repair shops and the insurance industry. One client’s car was hit while stopped at a traffic light. The other driver was at fault and they accepted responsibility.
This is where it gets interesting. I will leave the names of the insurance company and body shop out to protect the guilty. The car was repaired. There was some frame damage, so the shop put the car on a frame machine and repaired it. When I looked at the repair order the frame labor was called something else. I called the repair shop and struck up a conversation with the manager. When I asked him what was going on with the frame labor on the car, he told me that the insurance companies pressure him to hide this in other categories. They may call it "floor pull" or "structural" work on the invoice. Frame or structural work can appear on a repair order under other labor names, such as "frame pull" or "structural" repair, so it is worth reading the line items carefully. This is why they ask the repair shops to hide the frame work in their invoices. The insurance companies have a lot of influence over the repair shops because they can direct considerable business to their favorite shops.
The reason for all this is diminished value. When a car has frame damage, it suffers significant diminution of value. Even if the repairs are performed perfectly, the frame damage carries a lot of stigma. A survey Autoloss conducted about 20 years ago (see its date, method and limits) found that many buyers were reluctant to buy a car with frame damage. Here are the survey results. These results show that most buyers would not consider purchasing a used car with frame damage. This is why the insurance companies want to hide the fact that the car suffered frame damage — so the repair history is recorded accurately for any diminished-value claim. It's an underhanded tactic where the insurance companies use their power, but now we know one more thing to look out for.
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