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Fax mark proof

welcome everyone we'll begin the webinar on bulletproof file i'm melissa joles with rda impact mark olson ceo of vehicle collision experts as your presenter today presentation will take approximately 45 minutes we are recording it and we'll post it on our youtube channel if you have questions during the webinar you can type them in the chat box at the bottom right of your screen and they will be answered during the presentation now i'll turn it over to mark okay well thank you thank you and welcome everybody uh to the bulletproof file and uh so my name is mark olson so some of you have been on my webinars before some of you haven't and so if you have uh great you know great to have you on again if you haven't a little bit about me as i started out repairing you know cars or washing cars in a body shop work from there into you know cutting in some parts paint some cars today i'm a journey level collision repair technician also a refinished technician although i'm colorblind so i can spray it but i can't match it that's just how it goes um and as and then i am a former shop owner in seattle owned on and off for about 10 years i was a former allstate adjuster for one year in 1997 i founded a company called future forensics in which we do automotive damage forensic investigations and it's in that company is largely the reason why um i developed uh my first com my first major company which is verifax automotive you might heard of that one i'm one of the original founders of that company and uh divested from that company in 2016 and uh and started vehicle experts so i'm representing the vehicle experts today and this is all about working with you to make sure that when things go wrong things don't really go as bad as they could so we call it the bulletproof file and so there's our logo right there and what we are at vico is a little uh you know selfish plug here um we are your partner in collision repair and it's all about getting it right the first time they don't pay you to get they don't pay you to do it over to get it right the second time so we might as well get it right the first time so a quick check in and for those of you that have been on my webinars before i can't watch you do this but i highly highly highly encourage you to follow along and take part in what i'm going to tell you to do so there's nothing you have to turn in here but this is a nissan sentra and it has a scratch in the paint about that big now it's a nissan sentra and it's not a real scratch i had to put a little dot on there because i couldn't find a small scratch on a nissa on a brand new nissan so um so now the question is if that came to your shop and it had a scratch in the paint not into the bumper not a down didn't dig into the bumper at all what would you write on your estimate so here's what i want you to do i want you to write first of all what you would do and you're going to repair it you're going to touch it up with paint you're going to just rattle it with a bomb can you're going to paint the whole thing get r in the bumper um or you're going to replace the bumper you know whatever you're going to do just write just a couple notes there what you think should happen on that bumper the second thing is i want you to write down approximately how much you think you you would charge and for those of you that aren't in the body shops write down how much you think that would cost to fix a scratch on the bumper on a nissan sentra and then right below it and this is the most important part so if you haven't done any of what i just said to do at least do this put your initials down like you're renting a car so you wrote a couple notes and just put your initials like you you actually are the one that did that that'll become really important later and if you don't do your initials now you're gonna wish you did when i get to further on in the uh in the presentation and you're gonna uh look at that and go man i wish i would have done that so take my advice just do it so what you should have on a piece of paper or something else is the uh generally the scope of what you would do about how much you think and then your initials okay now i can't watch and see if you did it or not i hope you did so here's the premise you're going to get shot at just forget that you're going to get a shot at somebody you know you're gonna have a bad repair something's gonna go wrong and they're gonna hire somebody like me or and there's many other people out there they can hire that do similar things that i do but i do post repair inspections and i deal with when things go wrong i get involved in court cases i mean i testified on a trial yesterday via zoom i got one tomorrow so this really happens so you're gonna get shot at and if you never get shot at that's cool however you're gonna get shot at just take that so the question is can your shop withstand the bullet so really what i mean is are your files bulletproof so what do i mean by that so here's the scenario that i'm going to consider will happen to you at some point imagine that you get that dreaded phone call or a letter or even where she gets served legally and the customer comes in informing you that there's an issue with the vehicle now this can start as simply as the customer coming back going hey i don't think my door opens and closes right anymore so if you own a shop you've probably dealt with something like that that's how all of these start even worse somebody's been injured or killed now that we never want to have that happen however it does happen so and when people get injured or killed attorneys what they do is they look for anybody they can to possibly sue and i'll tell you some more stories about that later like real world examples of what actually does happen so what you say and do next can have a really really big impact on the outcome so if you take no other slide out of this presentation if you do what i'm telling you to do on this slide it's going to really uh help you anytime a customer comes in so first of all pull your file do not try and answer anything from memory i'm going to say that again pull your file before you try and answer anything from memory so there was a case in texas and many of you probably heard of it it was um where it was the cebuchans versus john eagle collision and it's the infamous uh honda fit riff that didn't work they glued it on they should have welded it blah blah blah blah the guy got burned up and the verdict was 43 million dollars okay but before you actually get to a jury what normally happens is there's something called a deposition and the deposition if you've had the pleasure of having them done you know what i'm talking about and if you haven't this is how it goes they have you come in and they ask you all kinds of questions for hours and whatever you say is under penalty of perjury and what they're expecting is is that whatever you say in the deposition is what you're going to say in court and if you say something different in court than you said in your deposition that means that you've actually misled the court or lied to the court and you can be held liable for that under the penalty of perjury which means you're in trouble so it's it's it's a little more serious than just a recorded phone call so the john eagle collision there was the manager his name was boyce willis and if and all you have to do is just google boyce willis john eagle collision deposition just do that and read the deposition and what you're going to be reading is how not to do a deposition the case was over at the end of that deposition now when before a jury got 43 million dollars but the case was over cooked after that deposition why well let me tell you a couple things he said he said that i know exactly how we fix that car now mind you john eagle collision they did about 500 cars a month which is far more than most of you are doing so 500 cars a month and the in the case was four years ago so let's do 500 times 12 times four and he remembers exactly what was going on exactly on that car no you don't i mean think about it what did you have for dinner last wednesday now you may or may not remember what you had for dinner last wednesday but boyce willis is going to tell you what he knows after thousands and thousands of cars exactly what happened four years ago you don't you don't remember do not answer questions until you actually pulled your file that's number one number two as your as the customer is explaining to you the circumstance or the problem take a detailed note of the complaint and listen and take notes it is not the time to start defending at all what happened what it was so the conversation would go like this okay mr smith uh so i understand that you uh believe the door is not lined up correctly and here's the magic magic keys ask them the question is there anything else now if there's nothing else you'll say no that's it but if there is something else normally they'll start with something small and it'll get bigger then then mr smith might say well yeah you know um there was two bolts that were under the seat that i don't know what they go to okay and just repeat back to them okay there's two bolts under your seat don't admit fault don't say anything just say and is there anything else and then he might say well yeah my seatbelt doesn't work okay so g bubble doesn't work okay anything else take all the notes you can there will be time for you to talk later the initial when it comes in do not talk let them do all the talking you are not going to change their mind on anything because they've already got their mind changed the only time that they're going to actually be open to hear what you have to say is after you've heard what they have to say think about that with your spouse you know if you uh you know if you're married your spouse might say something to you and they might be really upset if you just get their communication no i don't know and i don't recommend you go and is there anything else don't do that with your spouse it doesn't go well but the reality is that you got to listen to them all the way through and after it's done then they say okay and that's it then you can talk okay and if you are served like they walk in with a subpoena or you're being served legal papers get an attorney do not try and handle this yourself by calling the law office and trying to respond do not do that now you might say we don't have an attorney not a problem it's pretty simple get one and what i mean by that is just find a good business attorney in your area ask around and all you got to do is call the attorney and say listen i don't need an attorney um i don't have any legal trouble right now but here's what i need i need somebody to understand my business so that in the future if i needed to call an attorney i could call you and then take them out to lunch now depends on where you are with code you may not be able to go out to lunch but spend an hour or two with them just pay their hourly fee you know it's 250 300 bucks 400 bucks an hour whatever it is just pay it and now you have an attorney that you can call that understands your business the last time you the the time you don't want to be looking for an attorney that doesn't understand your business is when you're in trouble because now you have to it's hard to know who to call get it set up in advance okay and sync accounts is good advice in anything major anyway okay now number three um get it to the person of power so if you're the person that actually can write a check for it or control how things go then you can answer the questions if you're not the person that actually has control of how it's going to go do not answer the questions just get the communication and say and then it's very simple saying you know the person that needs to handle this is you know mrs smith because mrs smith owns the shop so mrs smith is going to make it i'll talk this over with mrs smith and we'll talk about how we're going to handle this okay now if you're in a position of power to resolve it resolve it but if you're not don't make promises that you're going to expect mr or mrs smith to have to take care of because sometimes they'll go oh man i wish you wouldn't have said that but you're going to hold them as a representative of the company to something okay now if you're a shop owner tell your employees exactly what i just said get the get the communication and then get it to you because you're the one that can make the decision okay you don't want your employee to say well yeah we'll buy you a new car and put you in a rental car and uh can pay you 50 000 a month for the next 10 years that can put you on the hook to something now that's crazy i know what i just said but get it to the person in power and then number three again which it should have been four so that's my type well if you can easily resolve it with a re-repair do so and you guys do this every day customer comes in says my pinstripe's falling off a little bit here you bring it back in you take care of it just make sure that you resolve every complaint they have not just the one they told you ask them the question is there anything else and if they say there's nothing else then you know if they say well wait a minute there's a few more things get all of those things because what happens is is if you don't get them all resolved then they'll say well i took it back and they only took care of the pinstripe they didn't take care of the seatbelt and that's true but they never told you about it gotta ask the question gotta ask the question okay now even if thing even if you think you're okay most calls that we get from shops that try to deny little things cause customers to hire experts that will find things now if i repair the car you can find problems with it if you repair a car i can find problems with it there's no such thing as a perfect perfect repair so when this happens you deny something small there's a 99 chance you're gonna buy the vehicle back and give an example so if you were in my post repair inspection um presentation i did i think that was melissa was that like september or something um i don't recall exactly what month it was but melissa was september was that september so go back and review that one i know that melissa you have it online etc but the reality is is that there's a honda um that's in there and what they denied was when the customer came to pick it up she went to put her she went to put her things in the back and she and she lifted her lift gate up and when she lifted her lift gate up the shocks didn't hold it up very well now the customer put it up in the air and left it up in the air and then slowly came down now i talked to the customer i said when was the last time you did that because i don't think i ever have i've never done that because i open it up throw my groceries in and close it so probably not even related but she went back to the shop anyway and said i need um my shock which the shop had rni by the way and a little uh there's a uh a net on a honda crv and the little clip was supposed to be brown and they put a black one on instead of a brown one because they had lost the brown one so they said we'll take care of the clip we won't take care of the shock she already had an attorney for the injury part of the claim the injury the attorney called us i gave the shot one shot at fixing him they didn't fix it we brought it in did a complete tear down and i kind of go through that whole story in the last presentation but can you imagine that you lose a drp you lose your business you get with a personal cpa consumer protection um action in this in the state that you're in and then depending on the state you're in it could be treble damages um all over a clip and a shock that's real that happened and i go over that actually in the previous presentation so again if you can resolve it easily with re-repair do it but make sure you're taking care of all their concerns and even if you think you're okay most calls we get are from shops trying to deny small things that causes customers to hire experts and we'll find things and this means you're probably going to buy the car that's just how it goes okay so let's talk about having a bulletproof file what kind of forms do you have so you probably have an intake form you probably have a you know quality control form you know you have different forms that you have in your shop now these can be either on paper or they can be electronic the only place they can't be is in your head everything's got to be in writing somehow or somehow captured and if you don't have forms where can you get them well one of the partners that we work with uh is ppg we work with uh action nobel we work with a number of them ppg has their uh their uh mvp program so they've got tons of forms axel's got tons of forms um if you know if you're like i don't want to use anybody else's forms i just want a bunch of ideas um don't call me google it go to google and put in body shop forms and you will find i think 40 000 different variations of different forms that people have now you're going to want to probably take the forms and customize them to your shop because different states have different laws and what you have to do so it's easy to find forms go to your partners that you're already existing with um if you're a vehicle shop we can give you some but what i say is go to just type in body shop forms and pick the ones that work for you i'm not saying you have to buy them just get the ideas now one of the things that becomes very important is the authorization form now at some point many of you i remember back in the days when i had my shop the authorization form was all-encompassing and was about three sentences that was back in the 90s that's changed now so first of all you have to understand that your customer is your client not the insurance company unless of course the car in your shop says geico on the door or progressive or whatever somebody insurance they're your client otherwise it is your client is the customer now your authorization form might be a part of a check-in form which is you know prior damage customer concerns and all that like the one on the right here or it might be a standalone form okay it's got to comply with your state laws so whatever your state laws say that you have to have on there some say that you have to have them uh they you know they wrote an estimate in writing blah blah blah you know for anything over x amount of dollars just make sure you comply with your state law now here's the other thing are you scanning i hope you say yes to that but and if you don't say yes to that you're gonna have a really tough time with a bulletproof file because you're not following the proper way to fix the car so let's say a 2019 subaru comes in you gotta pre-scan it and you gotta post scan it that's just what you have to do um and you also have to do inspections required after a collision and a bunch of things okay now are you scanning now what you're doing when you scan is your scan is you're plugging into the vehicle and when you plug it into the vehicle you're actually taking electronic data out of the vehicle and the electronic data coming out of the vehicle is now being it goes to a device that you've plugged into it and in some cases you've actually you actually use a third party there's a few of them out there the two big ones are air pro and aztec where you actually send the information to them or it's going over the internet and they're actually scanning it remotely do you have permission from your customer to scan that car and send anybody else their information do you have and so sometimes you actually take a scan report and you have a print out of it and everything looks good and the insurance company says hey send me the scan report did you get permission from the customer now here's something that happened a customer uh got the car fixed to the shop did a remote um and it wasn't aztec or pro it was another company they got a phone their customer got a phone call about two months later saying we've decided not to renew your insurance policy so the customer's like what do you mean why they said well um we know that you erratically drive and the customer's like how do you know that they said well you had your car fixed and they scanned it and we got that information showing that you routinely speed and you break hard and you go around corners too fast because the inertia so obviously now the customer is freaking out about the shop and the customer suited the shop that's how i got involved in it and i go right back to you did you get permission to share that information as simple as it sounds now the other thing is you take their name address and phone number and ccc mitchell it bottom text whatever it is and you upload that to insurance companies do you have permission to do that you need permission to do that you're sharing the customer's information if a customer insurance company says hey send me a copy of your estimate in the pictures don't do that without the customer's permission okay um now let's look at the state laws on signatures and authorization so cars towed in is it okay from by your state law that a customer calls and says verbally says yes you can fix my car you make a note of that now sometimes they'll say it's okay to do a verbal over the phone just you know date the time until you talk to but then when you actually see them so the first time they come to the shop they have to sign that they authorize them authorize that many times the shop will do a phone authorization the customer comes in one time and after they come in one time and they leave without signing that they actually in most states can come back to your shop and take the car away and not pay anything the reason why i'm so i know that so well is it happened to me my brother's uh manager of one of his restaurants i painted his car uh i gave him a price over the phone he said go for it he came by three four times no big deal uh the day the car was done he says my car done i said yep he uh came in took a look at it says nice job he says i'll be right back i thought he was going to grab money he actually came back with a sheriff and said give me my keys i never authorized this of course he doesn't work for my brother anymore either but that's what happened and i had to give him to him legally i didn't have an authorization to fix this car that met the state laws and he knew that and he scammed me so learned that one at a young age that was a long time ago now also we're in the day and age now of electronics so sometimes people they'll sign it and they'll fax it which is kind of old school sometimes they'll sign it scan it and email it sometimes they'll uh there's other programs out there like docusign but the question is are those legal in your state they are in some states and not other states so make sure that the authorization it might have to it could be electronic or facsimile which is you know like a copy or it might have to be wet and wet means a pen touches paper okay so check that with your uh your uh your local laws now is the person who authorized it so think about it so you know mr smith or mrs smith tells their daughter the son or daughter hey go drop off the car at the shop so now the son or daughter signs it say that son or daughter is 16 are they legally authorized to sign for a repair now many of you are probably going man i never thought of this kind of stuff before well and it doesn't matter until you get that dreaded phone call um so uh so it may be like in california if whoever signs that piece of paper is the one that you you have a contract with now the problem is the legal registered owner of the vehicle is not the person you have a contract with so it can get really sticky that if the son or daughter signs it somebody could actually come back to you and say wait a minute we i didn't authorize them to sign that they dropped off the car i was on vacation um this actually happened in uh i believe was florida where the guy goes on vacation kid directs a car he brings it in authorizes it dad comes in says i want my car and they're like well you can't because there's the the son the son signing he goes i never authorized him he's under 18. give me my car and he walked away with it so just some things to be thinking about there so is the person who drops off the car authorized to sign so you might want to have a form that you know or an email or something with mr smith or mrs smith saying yeah you know susie or fred's gonna drop the car off am i having to sign it and sometimes depending on your state you may want to get a power of attorney for them to drop off with it okay so then who do you contact about the additionals like we found more damage certain states say whoever signed it that's who you call so if you can imagine hey you're calling uh fred the son of uh mr mrs smith and you're getting things authorized like man the sound of my cards quit calling me i just dropped it off but that's the law okay and this very space to stay to state now when you're done are you going to test drive the car most of many times you are reset made ass systems and this and that do you have a waiver for that like you could actually drive the car on the roads and then here's one of the other big ones vehicle or insurance does your garage keepers cover the car as it's being test driven i invite you to look at your insurance policy about half of them do and half of them don't let's say that again check your garage keepers insurance that a vehicle that's being driven test driver otherwise by one of your employees or you is it covered under your garage keepers many people think well when they drop the car off the policy that's on the car that is owned by the consumer actually is the coverage and their policy might exclude that so just something to look out for okay um so scanning authorization form this is just an example um this mike anderson's website is out there um you know here's the scanning thing saying we're going to do this we're going to transmit it we're going to share it here's how we do it blah blah blah do you want to do it yes or no and if they sign no then they actually are telling you not to scan the car and that's that's the kind of person you probably may not want to repair their car um if they're if they're that skittish okay so vehicle intake form this is the big one now i invite you to go look at your forms because the forms that you have um oftentimes what happens is you don't fill out every blank so let's take this vehicle intake form here for example you got name address phone number you've got um the cosigner you've got the car you know prior damages notes you've got a vin number are you filling in absolutely every one of those blanks every single time and the answer to that question we you know and with vega we're in shops all over the country every single month you know we got one of our deal walks in the shop every single month and you know month after month same shot and we're looking at this because if you put if you don't put a vin number in there then what else did you not do that's part of your protocol so here's what we say whatever things you are mandatory that everybody fill out on every single vehicle leave that there but if you're not going to fill up the vin which in my in in in my opinion and this is up to you that if you if you're not going to fill it in and why would you just put your ro number that attaches to a vin it saves you time and any any blank that you're going to have there you could put n a but the problem is you can't put an a on a vin number unless it's in the 50s and it doesn't have it so the reality is that these forms should be much shorter and have a lot less blanks so if you're not going to if you're not going to fill it out completely then get rid of the blank and only have the other ones there and make them mandatory okay so now this one gets a little contentious adjuster customer inspector sign in so all adjusters all customers all inspectors um all people that are coming in to you know service your equipment all those different things or people that are coming into your shop need to sign in with a form that is a legal release of liability for injury also for video recording photographic recording and audio recording think about it in your shop you might have a video a video camera system you certainly are taking pictures around your shop you also may have audio recording i can't speak to your shop specifically but here's what i can tell you you have hazards in your shop in your paint department you might have what i call the detail department you have what i call wet sand juice that's where you wet sand the car and the stuff goes on the floor and it gets really slippery um true story an adjuster goes into us into a shop goes up on the frame rack and when they went up in the frame rack they were checking some frame damage or whatever they were doing on a supplement and they slipped off of the frame rack and they broke his hip and his collarbone stood the shop and won why because he he didn't have the proper ppe on first of all so he had no safety glasses he had no hearing protection and no respiration and that may or may not be appropriate depending on where it was in the shop but they didn't teach him the proper methodology of how to stand on a frame rack and not fall off it and that's how they lost the case cost them a lot of money so if you have them sign that form then you know things are dangerous and then you also have to offer them ppe which is you know basically a hearing protection uh safety glasses gloves is necessary etc and then how about in pain if you know you're at the adjuster go hey i'll just slip into pain i'll take a couple pictures of it in the paint department they're uh you know primer in the door or whatever i'll just get a picture of that they go in there without a respirator if they go in an area where paint's being sprayed and without a respirator they can come back to you later and say that you put them in a hazardous condition and didn't offer them proper ppe now i know that i'm sounding very harsh here and this may never happen to you but the reality is you want to get yourself protected okay because all it takes is one and you know and and i believe the framework one was about 350 000 that the person got plus medical bills on top of that so so it got pretty ugly okay on the form you want to have the name the company who they're representing what what car it is and what time they came in and what time they left and just keep a running total of that um for everybody now if a customer comes in for an estimate that that probably don't have to worry about that but if customer wants to go back in the shop you got to have them sign it because i know you probably have this sign on the door that says only people are allow only authorized people are allowed behind this door problem is when you tell the customer you can go back there you've just authorized them that makes you liable okay and then like i said earlier all have to comply with the personal uh protection equipment pbe which is you know respirators dust mass eye protection skin hearing all those kinds of things if you're going to expose somebody to that that could be a liability for you now you don't have to make them wear it you got to provide it to them though so safety glasses earplugs uh rubber gloves um you know uh dust masks and if they're gonna go into paint a respirator um that kind of thing just have it sit in there offer it to them when they say no i don't need it then at that point um and that's your process that's that works okay running the login knows all conversations with the customer all conversations with adjusters all conversations with parts vendors etc now if anybody on this call is a former insurance adjuster you understand this every conversation every time is date and time stamped now this can be done in a log fashion now many of the estimating management systems have a place to do this just use it or simply have a word doc and just every time something happens order the parts on the car shop you know the dealer call backs and parts aren't coming in until next tuesday um mrs smith uh you know for rudder forgotten garage door openers coming by at three o'clock just keep our running log of notes all the way through so each entry must include the date time and preferably the person making the entry so whoever had the conversations the one that actually does it and put your initials next to it okay internal notes this gets really important all communication should be electronic or in writing so when you're dealing with um you walk in the you walk back in the shop when you walk back in the shop your body text says hey i need three clips for the fender liner on that on that nissan center over there not a problem your first response should be write it down do not do anything verbal first of all it makes your job easier but now you have a track of that so now you got a piece of paper or something electronic a lot of a lot of people are using uh old cell phones and they're using them where they have their own email accounts they can send you a quick email um some people are using uh their own cell phones for texting although i don't recommend you do that and the reason why i don't recommend you use a personal cell phone is because if you took pictures with it and you send texts with him if something goes wrong they might say to you we need the device that generated this text so now they're going to go back to your body man and say we need your cell phone give it to us please and any codes to unlock it and you have to give it to them because they'll subpoena it so many of you are going wait a minute my body tech probably doesn't want people going through his personal pictures i don't blame you so old cell phones are good for pictures um you know you can have an email address that's in there um you know if you have uh some of the electronic ones ccc has it's your performance network has it where you can communicate electronically with tablets that kind of thing um that's the program it's not the device okay um always lost the tech on the supplement so they want three hours you got one hour it's a piece of paper or communication going back everything is documented part survival back order stuff and anything written needs to be in the file now you can take a whole page of notes take a picture of it and now store that electronically that's notes that works okay photos back in the old days photos were expensive polaroids buck is shy and i'm talking about bucket shop back in 1990 which a dollar in 1990 was worth a lot more than it is today nowadays you can take tons of photos and it really doesn't cost you any money other than hard drive space so take pictures of everything when the car comes in the entire car the interior all that photos of the vehicle damage photos of all around the car some shops are doing this with video they're just walking around the car talking about pointing things out um that's their vehicle uh system measuring systems on the car after tear down supplement damage measurements um initial and after each poll like take a picture of the screen the hookups test welds um and destructive testing um you know so if you put a core support on a car you're probably gonna have six or seven different test welds because there's different combinations of squeeze type weld and um and uh meg welding so you're gonna need to test well for each one of those get a picture of those get those in the file uh now if number seven what i just told you there you're going wait a minute mark that's not how we do it i'm telling you that's how you should do it because the oem says that you have to do proper welds american welded society standard says you have to do what proper welds and if i get involved in one of your cases or anybody does they're going to say give me your file and if that stuff's not in there we don't know that you tuned the welder up you didn't follow the proper working life um and you're probably gonna lose okay so again take pictures of everything initial spray out panels painted before it's unmasked when it goes back to body final delivery just take pictures um i have a shop that i worked with in st louis that uh the last file they sent to me there was like 600 pictures now albeit that's probably a little overkill it wasn't that big of a job but they really take pictures a lot of stuff but just make sure that your photos should be able to tell your story so there's also tools and documented aids collision edge great company tim briggs zones in out of atlanta um you know like on the left you can't see the dent on the right you can and all they did was they just put what's called a den viewer on it all it is it's a card that's got it's got uh lines on it and then in the reflection you take the picture and all of a sudden you can see the demo now so use different tools to help you because this is what happens in court so this is actually on the right that's the honda uh john eagle case that's actually the exhibit that went into court and then and that's why it's so grainy um because it's a picture of their picture so it says 104 roof welds missing so the arrows marked uh welded the roof points on the original honda fin on the left so they got a bunch of arrows and now the arrows on the right show where it was glued and the separation so that's what it looks like in court so you want to take pictures of everything you possibly can notes etc on the car so oem information how do you fix a car there's only one way to fix the car how the oem said to fix it now some shops say well we follow icar that's fine icar says follow oem there's no other way to fix the car and be protected so you got to have actual oem information not from a supplier or not general the john eagle case uh boyce willis basically said no we didn't follow the manufacturer we can fix the car better than manufacturer because 3m says we can glue the roof on just read the deposition you can't make this stuff up now you can use mitchell or all data or ccc1 oem for writing the estimate that oem is absolutely the best for repair you're going to get more information in the oem information than you ever will out of all that and ccc1 especially because they got hyperlinks now you got to pull the information when you write the estimate now i don't care if you wrote an estimate last week on a on a car you got to pull the information today and you want a date stamped um at least on the date of the estimate or one day after but how did you write the estimate do you want to write your investment with oem information date stamp it that way okay must include all operations not the cut areas so you're going to put a quarter panel on we're gonna also also have to do some corrosion protection we're also gonna have to disconnect the battery because we're gonna weld which means we've got a whole bunch of resets and all that we want all that stuff not just the quarter panel cut location and then put a photograph in the in the file or scan with signatures after each job completion so what a lot of our shops do they take the oem information the estimator signs that's what they're going to do the technician signs that they that's what they're going to do the production manager signs well that's what they do and then somebody at the end of it verifies that they did all of that and signs off and it all goes back in the file now you can either scan it put it in the file or take pictures of it put it in the file etc but it's got to be followed and it's got to be verified how about product documentation many of you don't do your own windshields you call a glass company how do you know the urethane they're using hasn't expired how do you know the panel bonding stuff you just got hasn't expired document yourself with some of the products that you use especially ones that expire so anything specified by the oem should be documented so when the oem says you have to use this product on our car use that product and take a picture that you did and if there's an expiration date on it make sure that you are using stuff that is not expired a little secret the stuff that's not the stuff that expired is a lot cheaper the other thing is don't don't stock your shop with 10 years worth of supplies because they're on sale if you if you're not going to use it up in a reasonable amount of expiration date time don't buy it you just buy what you're going to need that way that way that makes it work okay now the glass company if they're going to be doing the urethane not a problem tell them to give you a picture of the urethane they're using not a problem okay quality control forms this is the big big big one um and i know there's some other big ones in here but this is really big first of all don't make them too complicated you got to keep it really simple if you have down we're going to check the doors i'm going to check the lights we're going to check the oil we're going to check the moldings we're going to check them and you have about and fifty check boxes here's what's gonna happen either it won't get done the way you designed it meaning that they're gonna pencil whip it there's gonna check all the boxes or what they're gonna do is um they're just not going to do it they're going to put a line down it and just sign the bottom or whatever now you can do this as stage check and and same check and peer review so when body is done somebody needs to look at it before it goes to pain not the person that actually did the job somebody else and what we say to do is do a peer review have another body man come look at it now you might say wait a minute wait a minute body men don't like to be looked at by other body man i got that however the best person to look at somebody else's job is up here not an estimator not the front desk person somebody that understands the repair now that takes a culture shift to be able to do that um but it is the best way to do it and that's what we work on with vehicle is how do you create a culture that that it just happens okay um do it by stage or grouping there's lots of variations facts of the body shop form and the biggest issue is not using the system is designed in the form of pencil web another true story so i got involved in a case in seattle washington and you might have heard of it it's where a company called ride the duck seattle which is is that where they have the the boat that drives on land and then it goes into water it's like a tour boat you know they have in pittsburgh and you know all over the country um the left front wheel uh axle broke one across the center line hit a bus killed seven people and entered 72. so i was one of the lead investigators on that because of my background in suspension i was a trainer for hunter engineering as well i didn't say that in my credentials so i looked at it and i said you know what the story here is not the axle-breaking and the fact that they uh got a tsb told them to repair it they didn't that was one issue the bigger problem was i said give me 100 quality control forms so this is a commercial vehicle and it's a vessel so it's a boat and a like a it's like a boat in a semi and you have to have a check in and a check out every time it leave comes in it gets checked every time it leaves it gets checked and every time it comes back in it gets checked it's a lot of quality control forms so um then they got like 70 of these 70 of these things so when they come back in they all got all going to be checked well i took one look at it and they were all what i call pencil whipped it's real easy to tell if something's pencil whipped and it's by the handwriting and i'll show you that here in a minute so i told the attorney i said you don't need me to justify it's really simple they didn't do what they're supposed to do on this forum cover that in your depositions so take a deposition of the people that are supposed to do the quality control figure out how long they would take to do that ask them if they how they did it and they basically came out and said well they gave us an hour to do 72 trucks we pretty much just pencil with these things we didn't really look at everything that was the end of the case the company's out of business now okay i'm just telling you this stuff happens okay so if i were to take 100 files in your shop and come and look you know it's really simple on your quality control form go to the go to your paint department and see is it properly filled out for the stage that it's in because what happens often times is that the quality control form is is not filled out all the way through the process and then somebody pencil whips it at the end and puts it in the file like it actually happened if it's an in process we're going to do it with body then we're going to do it with paint then we're going to do it with back to body they're going to do with detail you got to have it now remember in the beginning i said um i want you to put your initials by that nissan sentra now that nissan sentra first of all the oem says to replace the bumper cover oem because it cannot be repaired due to the uh blind spot monitoring system so if you wrote down to replace the bumper cover pat yourself on the back if you wrote anything else other than the bumper cover like repair it you actually remember i said you got to pull the oam information when you write the estimate so you know how to write the estimate if you miss that part right there you actually are going to document in your file that you actually fixed the car wrong and you're probably going to buy the car but normally you're not going to hear about it unless the blind spot fails and somebody gets hurt or injured okay now handwriting check right below where you put your initials before go right underneath that and write your initials again and then write your initials again one more time and then write your initials again one more time okay so what you should have on your page now is four sets of initials the first one you did about 25 minutes ago notice how it's not exactly the same as the one i just asked you to do but the two after that i asked you to do were are somewhat similar to the second one but not really to the first one now right now if i were to look at your faces you'd be going my gosh that's how you tell if something's been pencil whipped because people have a different emotions emotional states they're in different places in their mind that kind of thing their initials are going to vary slightly that's how you can tell if something where they filled it out a lot at the end or they did it all in the process of what they were doing with it it's pretty easy to tell actually okay now repair documentation um if you're part of a sure performance network they have a program called i uh oemqc and uh iqc and basically this program is part of what you're already paying for not a problem this is a quality control form it imports your estimates take the pictures it gives a date and time stamp of the quality process all the way through there's other programs that do something like this ccc has the checklist and there's aftermarket bolt-on programs and do it as well i'm not saying you got to use electronics i'm not saying you got to use paper i'm saying you got to use something okay um and this goes back into the certain performance one technician documentation additional documents qc's um you know ability to review and approve to reject or assign i mean just it's got a technician footprint or fingerprint that's on it timestamp and all that pretty good documentation okay one of the things that vika we talked about um which we call it the ten step repair process i can spend the next two hours talking about this i'm not going to i'm just going to say here's the 10 steps of a collision repair number one scan the vehicle do the electronic check-in you pull the procedures when you write the estimate you actually um give this uh structural procedures and all procedures to the technician that's doing it and they follow it to a t that's also your sublet people too then you do proper welds which is also doing proper weld tests proper corrosion protection um and i said in the last presentation in september if you're not using one can of cavity wax per technician per week you're not doing proper proportion protection that's not this class that's a whole different class um that we teach but just suffice to say you gotta do proper corrosion protection you gotta properly use your quality control sheet you gotta properly do refinishing of course proper use of the intake sop and properly protect the vehicle if you do all 10 of those things right on every single car going through your shop you're going to start to become pretty bulletproof here's the reality well if i were to walk into your shop or one of my people walked in one of your shops and we looked at those you're probably going to be at about a 40 you're not going to be 100 just go back to your shop take this screen right here and really go look at your shop do a hard look just got some documentation no matter how you fix the car it has to be documented the way you fixed it which means that if you're going to test drive the car and not charge for it you still have to put test drive no charge if you're going to um do corrosion protection and not charge for it not a problem corrosion protection and don't charge for it if you start doing that you'll start to notice there's a lot of things that you're giving away i'm basically i'm really a big proponent of don't give anything away but i'm not running your company that's a business decision you gotta document exactly what you did if you don't have closing protection on your estimate i'm sitting there looking at your estimate i assume you didn't do it now you can't say well come on you would assume we would do it yeah we would but i also assume that you would write down what it what you're supposed to do and some states require you actually do you put down everything you do whether you charge for it or not and um even if there's no state law you should anyway so you can put in zero no charge and all that this goes for all non-included items such as test drives seat belt safety checks vehicle washing all that stuff you got to put on there okay estimates repairs all lines in the estimate reflect the repair gun on the car lines can be used for information lines can be listed at zero for no charge if it's listed and it's not listed it didn't happen and i'm going to quote rex dunn out of ohio he's with gerber now he used to own true to form he said to me something really great he said the only difference between two repairs is what you choose to do for free there's only one way to repair a vehicle and i'm going to add now mark olson to that which is the only way to repair vehicles phone on the oem and if you choose to do stuff for free you can do that what you can not do is not do some of the repairs that are required to properly repair the car so here's the ultimate goal in all this imagine that something did go wrong and i'm running a little bit over here with the repair and they call in somebody like me mike anderson kristen felder larry martinez or any other reinspector the first thing i'm going to ask you for is your file and the file is all that i should need or we should need to know everything that took place on the car your file is your best defense in any legal situation if your files are not complete has been pencil ripped don't have the right signatures you will likely lose the battle this could cost you a lot of money your business assets and at a minimum your mental health and when i say mental health i mean there's shopping in uh in indiana um you know i'm not gonna tell you his name but basically he has six shops um nissan got hit in the grill and then the hood he replaced the hood and placed the grill replaced the center locks for the bumper cover he didn't pull the dash out and do all the inspections required after the collision two years later car got the collision killed one of the teenagers and crippled another one and killed a dog they went after him for not doing the inspections required after the collision and this is a part an unoccupied car when it was hit so he didn't actually lose his business out of it his insurance company which he had coverage for actually paid about eight million dollars but then he lost his mental health because he said i can't fix a car wrong i got to do everything he lost every drp finally he said i got to get out of the business sold abra okay and so some shops in indiana so data storage don't use your estimating system to keep your files i'm gonna say it again don't use your estimating system to keep your files look at ccc how long do they keep your information in their computer normally it's about two years after two years it's gone how long do you warranty the car for what your warranties for as long as you own it as far as long as they own it your liability is for as long as that car is on the road so 20 years from now you better have that file in case something comes up it'll be long gone in your estimating systems you have to have separate storage for data that is yours and yours alone not a third party if you change manages management systems or estimated systems you do not have access to your data unless you are paying for it with mitchell if you don't pay ccc you lose it if you sell your shop most sales are asset sales and you're responsible for all repairs done in the past for as long as they're on the road um and some companies provide storage as part of their benefits like the sure performance does okay third party agreements every time you sign a third party agreement have your insurance company review the contract you were signing and also have your attorney look at it many of the contracts you've signed on a drp level or otherwise your attorney will tell you not to sign just do it it'll blow you away um basic file elements really simple all communications all repairs documented quality control forms every form you got all blanks filled in um a checklist of the file items when it's done and all files taken at the stage so melissa i ran a little bit over and i did want to give a little bit of time for questions um i know that was like drinking from a fire hose i invite you i invite you guys to re-watch that show it to your other people in your shop show it to your owners and managers because i'm telling you it takes one phone call and you can be out of business any questions come in melissa uh we don't have any uh yet um i i do want to mention that i will follow up by sending your information to everybody along with a link not only today's presentation but a link to the september presentation on post repair inspection so they'll have both of them cool what do you think melissa since you're the only one on the call that i know wow [Laughter] a lot of really good information yeah um yeah and um just i'm getting some feedback saying great information uh thank you i'll look forward to the link um yeah yeah and there's and my cell phone's on there i tell people they should call me and then they don't but five minute conversation with me can point you in the right direction i won't charge you for it call me let me help you you know all right well you're getting you're getting really great um praise on the webinar so um you know they're psyched um also i just want to say uh we look forward to bringing uh many more training opportunities in 2021 this is the last one for 2020 and um you know be safe take care everyone thank you so much mark and everyone who attended today um have a good day thank you and happy holidays to everybody be safe be safe you know hug your loved ones if you can and if you can't get on zoom with your mom and dad if you can't be with them and etc you know and all we have is family and holidays and you know this coming in so thank you thank you rda hopefully you'll have me back and i didn't scare the heck out of you um and thanks for the opportunities for them thank you all right take care everyone [Music] so