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—John Yoswick is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon who has been writing about the automotive industry since 1988. He is the editor of the weekly CRASH Network (for a free 4-week trial subscription, visit www.CrashNetwork.com). Contact him by email at jyoswick@SpiritOne.com.
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CIC Committee Looking at How Estimates End Up on Vehicle History Reports
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The Collision Industry Conference for example, needs the VIN in order (CIC) Data Access, Privacy and Se- to obtain the needed vehicle build curity Committee in April continued data, he said. with Ed Attanasio “However, if I’m a dealer and its ongoing discussion related to auto body shop estimates resulting I’m selling parts, I only need the last eight of the VIN,” Tagliapietra in entries on vehicle history reports. One key point discussed at the said. “What’s really important is CIC held in Oklahoma City: is the VIN being too widely shared within the industry? with Ed Attanasio “The underlying piece for us is there’s no vehicle build data” included in the VIN, committee co-chair Dan Risley said. “A lot of people assume if you have a VIN number, you probably have build data, but that is not the case.” with Ed Attanasio Pete Tagliapietra of DataTouch said many Pete Tagliapietra of Datashops may be unaware of data pumps running Touch shared a slide showing his on their shop’s computer system, extracting view of which entities in the indusdata for a third party try actually need access to the VIN during the repair and claims process, the industry getting to the point of noting “the list with is not Ed that Attanasio long.” A controlling the VIN, making sure company doing vehicle diagnostics, it’s protected and information isn’t
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shared where it shouldn’t be shared.” Aaron Schulenburg of the Society of Collision Repair Specialists agreed, noting one of the shops that raised this issue nearly faced litigation from a customer who assumed the shop had shared information with a vehicle history reporting company. “He stopped that from happening, because he stopped putting the VINs into repair plans,” Schulenburg said. “He’d put it in, decode the vehicle, pull it out and not have it in there. But that’s not practical.” Sharing the VIN as part of getting parts pricing during the estimating process is one of several theories on how merely writing an estimate on a vehicle can result in an “incident” entry on a vehicle history report; the dealers getting that information could have agreements to share that data with CARFAX or
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others. Tagliapietra said another common way to capture estimate data is if there is a data pump running on a shop’s computer system, extracting data for a third party. “Data pumps have become prolific,” Tagliapietra said. “It’s gotten out of hand, from my point of view, because the data has become so valuable. Most shops probably have a data pump, or more likely multiple data pumps, that are sucking the repair line information and personally identifiable information off of every estimate they write.” At past CIC meetings, CCC Intelligent Solutions has said it does not share data with CARFAX. During April’s meeting in Oklahoma City, Jack Rozint of Mitchell International delivered a similar message. Rozint shared the relatively
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