Insurance Estimates

The Process.

If your vehicle is driveable, we will need to obtain a repair authority from your insurance company in order to book your vehicle in for repairs. If your vehicle is damaged enough that it is no longer legal to drive, we will endeavour to collect it as soon as possible.The process to have a repair estimate authorised by an insurance company varies significantly between insurers. Some insurance companies have a very simple processes that means that repairs are authorised in a matter of hours. Others have complicated processes that can take up to 14 days for them to authorise.

The time scale from accident to authority can be affected by many variables, these include:

• Establishing liability
• Witness testimony
• Confirming area of damage
• Confirmation of policy cover

We will try to help you in every circumstance that arises. However, unfortunately we cannot make phone calls to insurance companies on your behalf about policy queries.

Below is a guide that should help explain the basic process:

Step 1 – Contact:

Call us on 0117 969 4000 to arrange an estimate appointment, if we haven’t called you already.

Step 2 – Estimating:

Arrive at our premises at your estimate appointment time. Please being your insurance information including your claims reference number and your insurance company’s name. Our receptionist will take note of your name, address, contact number, email address, vehicle make, model, registration, insurance company and claims reference number (unless we already have them).  This information stays with us and is not passed on to a third party. The only case where your information is passed on to another party is to either Honda, Volkswagen Group or Mercedes-Benz to issue you with your repair guarantee. One of our trained estimators will assess the damage on your vehicle. He/she will take identification images of the vehicle as well as images of the damage. They will take notes of the damage & key details of the vehicle. We may need to remove some small parts to be able to see the full extent of the damage, but this is not always possible. Anything we remove, we will refit. We may also need to place your vehicle on a lift to be able to see any underside damage. Please allow up to 30 minutes for the estimating process. We have plenty of tea and coffee in our customer waiting area along with a TV and a comfortable sofa.

Step 3 – Compiling the estimate:

Our estimator will create the repair assessment using a system called Audatex.  We will attach all the details and the images we obtained in the estimating process. This assessment will give us the cost to repair your vehicle. This will then be sent internally to your insurance company. This will be completed within 24 hours of your estimate appointment.

Step 4 – The waiting game:

Unfortunately, this where delays can occur and is outside our control. If everything is in good order we can have the authority back in hours. Sometimes, insurance companies can opt to send their external engineers to view the damage. That can take up to 10 days to visually inspect your vehicle. If a delay arises that we are aware of we will contact you immediately. As a customer the best thing you can do to hurry along a delayed authority is speak to your insurance company. Unfortunately, they will not allow us to speak to them on your behalf.

Step 5 – Authority:

Once we obtain a repair authority from you insurance company, we will make contact with yourself and arrange a booking-in date convenient for both of us.

If you have any questions outside of this guide, please do give us a call. Our contact details can be found here.