The Automotive Service Association (ASA) board of directors has approved a policy position statement regarding OEM repair procedures. According to ASA, the association’s collision operations committee initiated the statement in response to a consensus expressed among members and the independent auto repair community that, too often, they are not fairly compensated for their work.
“This problem occurs when technicians must devote significant time to researching the proper OEM repair procedures for their customer’s vehicle, potentially extracting many hours of labor,” ASA wrote in a press release announcing the policy position statement. “This step is standard, necessary and critical to ensure that the repair is completed correctly. Skipping it is not an option. However, estimating databases do not account for this time as part of the repair process.”
ASA’s statement initiates an effort to make it standard practice for databases to factor in OEM repair procedures research time in their estimates.
