Commercial and Fleet Billing?

[mafsu]

On car rental fleets it is a good idea to separate the cars that are at the point of turnback from the ones that are still in the rentable fleet.

Repairs on vehicles that are due for turnback have to be invisible enough that the inspector (ITS or whoever that manufacturer uses) will not see it. I used to be able to repair about 25 to 30% of the stars that I would see in these cars so that they would pass. Now I am probably up to around 80- 90%. Point being even at 20% it saves the company a bunch of money. That said, only repair the ones you can get to pass and let them know the others have to be replaced. The upside to these inspections is that some manufacturers are also making them replace cars with multiple nicks or abrasions in the windshield. These are easy to fix and a large percentage of their windshields will have these abrasions.

As for the cars that are still in service (even if they will eventually be turned back) the main selling point on repairs is saving the company from multiple replacements. They replace a windshield today because the star in it won't pass turnback inspection three months from now when it is turned back. Next week the same car is back with another star. Another strong selling point on these vehicles is they don't have an extended downtime waiting for the glass shop to get there to replace it. With fleet managers it's all about downtime. I have also seen companies who will not repair the star, because they are going to have to replace it at turnback anyway. Your selling point to them is next week they will have downtime on a car that is out of service with a cracked out windshield. As far as the rental companies replacing all of their windshields at the cost to the renter's insurance. You may find a local company who is able to do that, but with the large national chains that would be a logistical nightmare. One of the jobs I had while working for one of the large companies was subrogation and it's hard enough to get the money out of the insurance companies when their insured totals a car. It would be nearly impossible just to verify which renter was responsible for the damage once it was noticed. In other words you may have been speaking with the wrong person at the rental agency or they were blowing you off. Either way don't give up on it be persistent and you will eventually get your foot in the door.

[V-Glass]

Hey Scratchy, South Louisiana is plagued by the same mentality. It's called being penny-wise and pound-foolish. It may also be bad experience from previous wsr and to them, it's simply a waste of time and resources. (But if they only knew....)