Windshield Repair Forum

When I do an insurance job I have to:

Hand the invoice to a person I pay to proccess it (secretary)
she will have to correct and scan each invoice for errors
she will enter it into the quickbooks
she will enter it into our EDI program
she will have to temp file it in our waiting to be paid file cabinet
she will check on line 2 days later to see if EDI went through
she will have to call to correct SGC's mistakes on the EDI batch
she will then file it alphabeticaly
30 days later
she has to receive the check when it comes in
she has to find the old invoice in the file
she has to mark off the check info on the paper invoice
she has to mark off the check info on Quickbooks
she has to file the stub for tax purposes


CASH DEALS

Hand the invoice to a person I pay to proccess it (secretary)
she puts it in quickbooks
she files it alphabetically



When I do a cash job I charge $25-15-15 max of 3.
When I am called out on a job I charge $35-15-15 max of 3.


The above explains why the insurance companies should pay more than cash customers. Peronally I think it is actually kind of screwing the customer to charge insurance rates and only doing less than half the work in exchange. I choose to give my easiest customers a discount for making me not have to bill them and wait 30 days to get my cash in. I do this because I care about my customers and my 10 minutes on a cash job is frankly not worth Lawyers wages. Honestly people .. how many of you went to college for 6-8 years for windshield repair and ran up a hundred thousand dollars in school loans and passed an extremely difficult bar exam to get into the WSR biz? Not a single one of us did this, so why should we expect to get $50 for 10 minutes work? I'm sorry guys but we are just fixing a simple chip in a windshield not doing brain surgery or really anything SUPER important at all. This is one of the least skilled labor things you can do on a car. Even a mechanic with full certification doesn't personally take home $50 for 10 minutes work and I guarantee you he has more training and more skill than any of us ... and does more for his money than any of us. Many of the people on this board think your pooh is made of gold (meant in a nice way) .. but I am here to tell you it isn't. The only reason the insurance companies pay us so much is because there are expenses involved with doing a repair and waiting 30 days to get paid ... other than that we do not deserve $50 for 10 minutes work in my mind.

Many times doing fleets I have made $100 an hour for 8 hours straight ... but I did it not because I charged ridiculous rates, but because I carried 7 bridges at a time (which you can ONLY do with Delta Kits bridges due to size and their spring loaded design) and I marketed like crazy and did multiple large accounts in a single day. Obviously I like to make $100 an hour but to sit here and pretend like I am worth attorney wages is just frankly ... absurd.

sorry guys.

I think you are way off on this. The average windshield will cost someone $200. We can argue average price, but this is what GM charges their fleet customers at turnback, so I figure it to be a fair point(actually $210 but I'll round down). The large glass companies will not match that price on many windshields (five vehicles that I know of), in this area. It's also the most common glass deductible I run across day to day. Therefore I think fifty dollars is a bargain, and 90% of my cash customers think that price is a bargain for the service they recieve. School or not, your mechanic nor your lawyer can repair your windshield the way I can.

Brain,

I thought you were concentrating on the real estate business these days;) So, what brings you back to this arena? Could it be maybe.... you miss repair?

I'm almost sure in your real estate business you wouldn't have any guilt feelings making $2,000-$6,000 at closing off a seller even if your time involved was only 20-40 hours would you? So why push guilt on what we charge for repairs? Do you honestly think any of us make $50 profit on every 10 minute repair? If you do.....you forgot to add up a few things. Like driving 30-45 minutes one way to service a single customer 15- 25 miles away, gas, vehicle insurance , self employment health insurances, liability coverage, advertising expenses, FICA and last but not least trying to put a few dollars aside for retirement in a IRA or mutual fund. There's no pention plan in WSR unless you make one!

Charging $25 - $35 dollars per repair just won't cover all this....unless 10-20 people are banging on your doors daily. Doesn't happen like that in this business. We all have to keep prices up to a point were we can all make a decent living. I honestly don't feel charging $50 for a repair is unreasonable or for that matter dishonest.

Your welcome to reply;)

Starquest,
Yes, I am talking about publishing the cash price on the invoice copy.

If you are doing 10 minute repairs, I wish you would charge $10.

No, seriously, I've always heard that the industry average cost for a windshield is around $300 - the bad news is that that $300 average price hasn't changed for about 15 years. That's why we're making $60 for insurance work instead of $100.

My $55 same-day price for new customers is fairly easy to sell as less than 20% of $300. I mostly base my price on $5 off the good-insurance-guys price of $59.95.
I figure it costs me $5 to handle an insurance bill, but I run kind of lean.

Also, I'm giving each retail customer an hour of my time - letting them know their job is getting my full attention. My focus is on quality - no air left in the break. If you do the best repairs around, the other guys push business right to you.

Use to be that I never had to rerepair someone else's work. Now it happens almost every day. Must be because of the replacement shops that can't make a fair amount to do the repair right and because of the number of people who are doing the "10 minute" repairs. larry

Attention All Replacement Shops who don't make enough on repair to do a good job:
Stop doing repairs !!

It's almost as though you guys are pretending I don't know what WSR is about ... I have only done basically every aspect of the business including training personally (outside of the Delta Kits seminars) many hundreds of people to do the biz. I have personally dont' over 20k vehicles ... which means closer to 40k-50k chips outside of the training chips. I know just a little about the biz and I still do cash jobs for $35 if I have to drive to someone. I made good money also. If I am at a tent I charge $25.

Starquest,

Thank you for your posts! That is exactly what we're talking about. There is no way that charging insurance rate is being dishonest or disrespectfull to our customers. Value is a perception and it is all in the way you approach it. Or how you "sell" it. Whatever you want to call it. Our Customers are overjoyed when they can save 70-80% off the cost of a replacement windshield. OVERJOYED! They understand that we are just a couple of local guys trying to make a living and put food on some plates back at the homestead...not to mention paying uncle sam and so on. It doesn't matter if we went to school for WSR for 4+grad. How about rental car companies? I am sure their customers keep renting because they feel that $200-$300 per week is disrespectful to them when the average car payment when you purchase is about the same a month! This represents 3-4 times the monthly cost and is being collected DAILY by every single rental car company in the world. Oh, and they don't have any courses or majors in Car Rental at the University last time I checked.

So, by charging $25-35 just because you are in a tent or in a location or because you feel like any more would be "ripping off" your customer...you are only killing your business. Doesn't matter if you do 50k customers at $25 if you left $50 on the table each time. Do some quick math...I would have to do HALF THE AMOUNT OF CUSTOMERS TO MAKE AS MUCH AS YOU DID. Talk about smart business decisions.

Keep up the good dialogue everyone.

Peace.

I learned my motto while working as a bartender/waiter right out of school.

WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER.

Think about what you are doing and make a calculated approach. You'll have a higher rate of success.