Vin-Etching

[jcw40]

I'm looking for some more information on vin-etching I've done some research but haven't found anything that is of useful information. I've read that you can get insurance discount, better theft deturrant, and the vehicle entered into a database to help with the theft. If anyone can shed some more light on the subject I would greatly appreciate it. Oh and i've searched through previous posts and didn't really get many answers from those either. Thanks for all teh other posts and advice on here it's great to have this handy referrence guide so easily accessable.

[Brent Deines]

Do you have specific questions? Are you interested in having it done or doing it for profit?

[jcw40]

I'm looking at adding it to my exsisting repair business and just looking for any ideas or responses on the subject.

[Brent Deines]

I used to do some acid etching but never got set up to apply the VIN on windows. I did a survey with my customers and did not find they were willing to pay much for the service, although I did not do a lot of car lots. I think car dealerships are the prime market for this service as they are always looking to tack something extra on to the invoice and people seem to be more willing to add another $1 to their monthly payment they are to pay $50 up front for the same service. I used to do a bit of pin striping and found the car dealerships were the best market for that service as well. I would charge them $15 to do a simple stripe and they would add $150 to the price of the car. If they had to lower the price of the car to make the sale they could lower it $135 and still get full price for the vehicle. With enough little add-ons like that they often don't have to reduce the true price of the car at all. Other examples are under coating, upholstery stain protection, and of course VIN etching.

I have not used the sand blasting systems but have seen demonstrations and they seem to work pretty well. Acid etching probably takes slightly longer but costs less. There are companies who will cut the stencils for you, but the key in my opinion is to have the capability to cut your own on site.

[t4k]

In my area, VIN etching and gold plating are in the same boat and sinking. I've never offered the service but I know of two different companies that tried it at the car lots and it failed in the first month.

[Brent Deines]

I'm not surprised. In this economy most car lots in our area won't spend an extra dime on a car. We were talking about this yesterday and apparently they are not even cleaning the engine compartment or detailing the used vehicles any more. This is hurting the headlight restoration and windshield repair business as well, but in my opinion the car lots are making a mistake. I would not buy a vehicle if the headlights were brown, the windshield had a chip on it, or if it were not clean, because I see those things as being indicators of how the rest of the vehicle has been cared for.

[Frank EU]

In Nederland -or as you usually call it: The Netherlands or Holland- Carglass (a Belron company) and some other vendors used to promote VIN etching as a free service, others promoted it at a very low cost. We have a ''system'' in our training room for demo and testing purposes but we were never really interested in using and promoting it as an add-on service. Sure, it would bring in some additional cash, it is very easy to be done, and the cost price per job is very low, but we just never really liked it.

[screenman]

We used to earn a lot of money putting right the mistakes Funny how a guy can blast ABC123 instead of ABC 321 £145 per vehicle to correct and we got the job down to1 hour and a few minutes, did 5 at one garage in one day once when they did the first car wrong and carried on.

[Frank EU]

And yes, indeed we also have ''that'' system available. I completely forgot about it! It's gaining dust on the shelves I believe. We were trained to use it back in the old and dark GW days, but again: we never liked to use it. However; I know some people that made some real money in removing the VIN-edging errors like Screenman described, they were also in the UK

[Eco Steam]

The chemical etching is a waste of time because it can be removed fairly simple. The Dust blowing Etching system that's out there (I have one), is the best way to go, because it actually etches the glass about 1/32 of an inch, and you CANNOT scrape it off!

I Think that if you run a small business, and you currently only offer 1 or 2 services, this wouldn't be a horrible thing to get into, just as long as you took the time to advertise it, and get the word out there. Don't charge an arm and a leg for the service.

My prices were kind of the same as Chip Repairs, in a way.....

The 1st window is $30.00 and each additional is $5.00

You could make a few bucks off of a vehicle, because who is just gonna get one window done? Usually the people that have had a window broken out or something like that......but still.....

It's pretty simple to, all you have to do is when you sell someone on it, you put your template together, hook it up to your gun, make sure your PSI are good on your portable compressor, and it only takes a few seconds on each window. A SUV shouldn't take any longer than about 10 to 15 minutes and that's doing all of the windows.....

The 1 that I've done ( I stopped advertising and put all of my focus into my Detailing & Glass business ), I charged $70 for a Full size SUV...

That's my 2 cents....

JJH