EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE
Photo Estimating Technology Is Ahead of Its Time – Literally!
by CHARLES BRYANT
Insurance companies are touting photo estimating technology as the way of the future. Well, they may be right as long as they make sure they emphasize the future. Insurers are taking the position that the photo estimating process is the fastest one ever created to handle auto property damage claims. Well, based on documented cases here in New Jersey, the opposite is true. It is taking much longer to get through this estimating process than the traditional way of having either a staff appraiser or an independent one come out and physically inspect vehicles and prepare an estimate on the damage discovered through that inspection. On top of that, based on actual documented cases, the traditional method of physically inspecting damaged vehicles is much more accurate. Now, I am sure the insurance industry is not going to like this information being revealed, but the truth is the truth. The reality is the photo estimating process is causing much more harm than good. Please allow me to explain. Time and time again, we have seen cases where a collision shop will go along with an insurer and do that carrier’s job by taking photos of the vehicle damage, preparing an estimate and sending the photos and the estimate to the insurer as requested. However, when the insurer responds, the estimate it sends back to the shop only covers a fraction of the damage the shop discovered during the actual physical inspection. When the shop
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16 | New Jersey Automotive | April 2021
questions the insurer about why its estimate is so far off from the original, the response is always basically the same: “That’s all we can justify based on the photos you provided.” Naturally, the shop’s response is, “Well, then you need to do your job and get out here and physically inspect the vehicle.” The insurer then responds with something to the effect of, “We no longer have appraisers available to perform the inspections, so you will need to take more photos and send them and maybe take them in a better lit location.” Although this often infuriates the shop owner, they will follow the request and take more photos under better lighting and send them to the insurer. However, what happens next is even more frustrating. More often than not, the supplemental estimate the insurer sends back this time is only for a few hundred dollars – which is still thousands of dollars off from the shop’s estimate that was based on an actual physical vehicle inspection. This often goes on for several weeks until the insurer decides that the vehicle is considered a total loss based on the last supplement it wrote. However, when the shop submits the bill for the storage and administrative services provided during the weeks it took the insurer to finally come to this conclusion, the insurer’s response is, “We are not going to pay storage until the vehicle became a total loss based on the last supplement.” Well, the truth is, the vehicle became a total loss when the two vehicles
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