Severity and Cycle times, what a car owner should know
Your car has been in an accident. You look at your car and wonder who and how it will be repaired. Your fault or not you need to know that the work will be done properly and safely. The Autobody shop shop’ mandate is to repair your car and get you back on the road. A good autobody and repair shop will look further and will restore the car back to its pre-collision, OEM spec’d state to get it back on the road for you.
What is your insurance company’s mandate? How do they look at the repair? Quality, fast or cost effective repair.? Most lean towards cost effective repairs, leaving the bodyshop responsible for the quality and efficiency portion, it up to us to mediate the cost of repairs with the ins. co to be fair in the end for all concerned to make sure the standard of final repair is high.
Insurance companies talk about severity & cycle times, both of which are related to costs the insurance company will put out per individual claim. Severity is the direct cost of the repair. Cycle time is how long it takes to get the car repaired (start to finish) related to car rental cost the insurance pays out. The shop your insurance has a monetary deal with and hopes that you will take your car to for the repair is under a strict mandate from the insurance company to minimize these costs and times. These shops have to keep their averages at their mandated costs and times low and below average, or there are major penalties assessed by the insurance companies to these shops.
But trying to keep under these insurance payout averages affects the quality of the repair of your car. Though our shop does not subscribe to any severity & cycle times guidelines, we do keep this in mind when we are repairing a vehicle for our devoted clients to be cost and time-sensitive. Severity & cycle times are based on the average cars and average repairs, at Mitek we do not work on average cars or do average repairs, we do the highest quality of repairs required to restore your premium vehicle to its pre-collision state, the vehicles we work on and the high quality of repairs we do will take longer than any average everyday shop.
From my experience, I have seen car owners get caught up in a situation where they have been persuaded to go to an insurance recommended shop and have had to go back a few times to try and get some quality & deficiencies corrected. After a few times if they find that they just cannot get it right the owner will reach out to their insurance company for some remedy, owners will demand to have their car re-repaired this time at the shop of their choice. The insurance company should allow this at the ins. co.’s expense. We have re-repaired many cars for clients dissatisfied with their ins. co.’s choice of bodyshops.
What a hassle!
Would it not be better to deal with the right Autobody and Collision shop from the beginning?
I think so.
Mike Tikl
Proud owner of Mitek Fine Autobody & Paint
Serving Kitchener, Waterloo. Cambridge, Guelph
Your Fine Car Deserves our Fine Care