Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 10, 1993 TAG: 9311100045
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Adjusters and insurance company staff can't recommend any single shop because Virginia has a no-steering law. So you probably asked friends and strangers for recommendations.
However, if you were an Allstate Insurance Cos. customer, you would be given a list of affiliated PRO Shops. PRO - for Priority Repair Option - shops promise to put Allstate customers first, and Allstate guarantees the work for life.
Allstate says the program is a way to insure quality repair because it sets standards of training and equipment for affiliated shops.
But some body shop owners believe the Allstate program crosses the line between customer service and coercion, contributes to price fixing and takes away rights from customers and shop owners.
Part of the contract a PRO shop makes with Allstate may set prices for repairs that are below area averages. Shops also may give other concessions, such as providing towing, in order to be designated a PRO shop.
The idea is that the additional business a shop gets from the affiliation will offset the loss of income from concessions.
Norwood Wooding's body shop has been in the Allstate program four years. He said his work volume increased about 20 percent immediately after he joined, but that new business from Allstate now accounts for about 8 percent of the 20 percent increase.
"If I was going to try to live off Allstate, this business would close in three months," Wooding said. However, he said his business has grown to an annual $1.7 million operation.
He employs 11 people. When he began seven years ago, he worked four.
Wooding said he makes no more concessions to Allstate than he makes to other insurance companies; that all of them have some expectations of shops.
"It's still my shop. I run it basically the way I want to," Wooding said.
Eugene Hannabass had a different experience with the PRO program.
"They kept wanting too much free work. It was cutting into our profits," said the co-owner of Hannabass & Rowe Auto Body Repairing & Painting Inc.
Hannabass got out of the program after a year and a half.
"It gets to the point where they're running your business," he said.
He said the Allstate affiliation "kept us busy" but that the shop actually makes about as much net profit now as it did with the insurance company program.
Managed-care type programs in the auto body repair business anger Jon Griesenbeck of Euro-Specialty Inc. and Randal Johnson of Roanoke Wreck Repair.
Neither is a PRO shop, and they say they don't want to be. They have taken on the Allstate program, saying they want to make consumers aware of how it works.
The men said they work on cars referred by Allstate, but often the customer has to pay the difference between their charges and what the insurance company thinks the job is worth.
Sheila Loftus, executive director of the Washington Metropolitan Auto Body Association, said the group is divided on the issue.
However, she said the PRO shop program, which may work OK now, interferes with the repair "triangle," which includes the insurance company, the customer and the body repair shop.
"Shops that have allied become agents of the company," she said. "They'll dance what dance the insurance company says. They have become the adjusters for the company."
Loftus argues that insurance companies aren't passing on savings to customers either.
Money does drive the program.
Qualified shops can't get in unless Allstate invites them.
That way Allstate can assure that the affiliated shops get enough business to remain loyal, said Larry Timmins, Allstate's property claims manager in Northern Virginia and its PRO-shop spokesman.
Timmins said the program is taking heat from some of the industry but that it is an idea that won't go away.
Jesse Jones, superintendent of claims for State Farm Insurance in Roanoke, confirmed the trend to "direct repair" shops, but said his company, the largest insurer in Virginia, doesn't want to go that route.
"We have fought that. We don't try to advise customers because it's not fair to shops that don't have the equipment," Jones said.
"We tell customers they can take their cars to any shops they want to," said Jones. "It's your car, your choice."
The consumer still is in control. The consumer decides which insurance company will get his or her business. The consumer determines if the repairs are acceptable.
Last Wednesday we asked readers for their definition of the ideal man to see how it fit with Brut fragrance's new advertising campaign that said the ideal guy is a closet Boy Scout who doesn't mind housework but is a man's man.
We got four good and different responses.
One man who identified himself as "young" said he is "the type of guy that loves that pix of the woman shaving the guy. Only, in addition to her great legs and chest, I'd like to see her face." (The picture was a close-up of a man's foam-clad face nestled near his shaver's knees. We'll give this guy a point for being concerned about the face.)
The second caller was a young woman who described the ideal man as: "A man who will talk to you, hold you when you cry and doesn't mind when you have mood attacks."
She also said she has found her ideal.
The third caller elaborated on the difficulties that some men and women have relating in today's society. He said he was 26, and married to a woman who wants to do "the manly things" and have him do the household things.
She doesn't want a "devoted husband because it makes her vulnerable," he said.
He said many women in his age group "want men under their thumbs."
"I open doors, write poetry and still go out and shoot the bear," he said.
A fourth caller rejected the idea that the ideal man wears jeans and likes barbecue. He said he likes khakis and family-style cooking.
"The ideal man is an outstanding husband and father, demonstratively affectionate to his family, capable of fiery passion, but always in control," No. 4 said. "Self-control is the essence of masculinity."
He added that the "picture of the man being shaved is ridiculous unless he's paralyzed."
by CNB