Accreditation Leads To Cheaper Body Repairs

Thursday, 22. October 2009

It wasn’t that long ago when you could return a car at the end of a lease in pretty average condition and the leasing company would overlook anything other than serious damage. These days they send out specialist inspectors to check over the car and seem to charge for anything that doesn’t conform to showroom condition, in one case they counted the number of stone chips on the bonnet and argued that there were 4 or 5 more stone chips than were acceptable under the ‘normal wear and tear rules’ insisting that the bonnet be re-sprayed. As I was on the case they didn’t get away with that one but as drivers attempt to avoid end of contract charges they are having the car ‘tidied up’ by a smart repairer at the side of the road. Unfortunately, if the inspector sees some repair work on the car which he considers not up to standard he will report this to the lessor who will charge for the work to be done again. It is therefore good news that the Institute of the Motor Industry is looking to introduce accreditation standards for Smart repairers next year that will be recognised by insurers and therefore should meet the requirements of the lenders. Training courses have been set up with accreditations to be issued early next year. Personally I’m not convinced that this will avoid end of contract charges with some lenders hell bent on unfairly charging anyone they feel they can con and pressurise into paying. There was one case where a driver had left a repair a little late for the main dealer to repair before the car was due for return but as the dealer had serviced the car from new they told the driver to contact the repair shop that carried out all of their overflow work, thus saving the driver some money by talking to the repairers direct but still having the car repaired to the standard that would have been achieved by the dealer. The leasing company, obviously finding out that the repair work hadn’t been carried out by the main dealer, tried to charge for the repair to be re-done even though the repair had been completed to the level approved by the manufacturer – they didn’t get away with it but it caused the driver a great deal of time and hassle. That’s why I have stopped using some funders and why the role of the professional broker is more important than ever before. By Graham Hill