Can you bill Direct line (UK only)

[Glass Doctors UK]

does anyone have any info they would like to share regarding this insurance company and what happened when they either billed them or their customer paid and reclaimed.

[screenman]

I have had payment direct and to the customer in the past, but as you know this is all changing. The sooner the insurers stop paying for repairs the better. With about 90% of repairs carried out being a total waste of money I for one will be happy when the insurers see the light.

[Glass Doctors UK]

I agree with the bit about most repairs being a waste of money, however i do not ever think insurers will see any sort of light ever when it comes to windscreens. They have such a blinkered and unrealistic view its just laughable, most of the information they get comes straight from autoglass without ever being checked in my experience. On one hand they are moaning about "claims farms" with people standing in car parks but on the other they are willingly paying autoglass bills which are generated in that way. Im not sure getting rid of repairs will be a completely good thing, but i am sure it may well happen as state farm have started to do, then we are just back to square one without any real insentive for the policyholder to get it done.

[screenman]

There are many things to sell repair on rather than just the free bit, I do not need to list them as you already know them all. How many jobs a week are your guys getting called out to do that have been hashed up before. For one VW agent we counted 9 out of 10 jobs they called us for had been done before. It is not just carpark guys or the big names in replacement, it is everybody who does not take the skills or the inclination to do the job well everytime. Take screen repair off insurance put the excess up to

[Glass Doctors UK]

We do also try to sell repair on the other parts of our service that we feel are better than the competition however the price aspect is surely the dominant buying factor for most buyers. I do not agree with this however it is just market forces i guess. Once the proposition goes to crap repair for free or good repair and you have to pay something for it then we must all agree that ever the best repairer will lose a significant volume of work on this factor alone. I would support the scenario that you outline in principal but think that any strategy that relies on insurance companies actually thinking through the consequences of their strategies is asking a bit too much! The thinking seems to be far too "reactive" for that. Certainly in my humble experience the main player is consistantly worse than anyone else in terms of repair quality. Poor equpiment, non existant training and bad attitude to repair. When a repair is bad and the solution is to offer a replacement at a higher profit then that just sets the scene for what we have all seen. I try not to underestimate the volume of "repairs " the main players actually do. Re repairs are a growing problem everywhere, im glad its not just us that gets deflated seeing them.

[Layne]

I suppose that the only good thing that could come of "the waiving of deductible" policy would be the huge impact upon third party admin such as Belron. People may then shop for repair techs to save the cost of replacement (unless they have full coverage).

[Glass Doctors UK]

on fully comp policies in the UK the deductable is waived anyway and that is the norm