Posted by Goose on September 09, 2011 at 15:36:24 from (173.190.237.126):
‘Coupla days ago, there was a thread about vehicle service contracts and/or extended warranties. There is a significant difference between the two.
Thirteen of the last 17 years of my life were involved with a company that administered service contracts. (I’m having Internet problems at the moment, and I’m switching Interned services to solve the problem, but here’s a basic overview if I can get it posted).
When I started with the company, seven of us were the entire company. We grew to 240 employees and an “A” rating by J.D. Powers. Then the bottom fell out, and the company was ordered into liquidation. That is a long story in itself, involving a half dozen entities with contractual obligations to each other. When I left for good a year ago, I was the third from the last to go.
Now, I’ll say at the outset, we did not sell contracts ourselves. We were paid a set fee per contract to administer claims. Our revenue was the same whether we approved or denied a claim, although it did behoove us to look out for our client’s interests. At one time, we had some 60 Adjusters, and anyone who tried to deny a legitimate claim and was found out was in deep doo-doo.
One big factor in our downfall was all of the scams perpetrated on us by the repair shops and dealerships we dealt with. The large franchise dealerships were the worst of the lot. If we’d have pressed charges of insurance fraud or attempted insurance fraud against every shop that tried to scam us and get rich at our expense, we’d have spent all of our time in court.
Many of you who claim to have been scammed by a service contract company or extended warranty company were just as likely to have been scammed by a repair shop that “double dipped”. The shop would have the repair covered by the contract, and then give the contract holder some phony excuse that the repair wasn’t covered, so they’d get paid twice for the same repair, by both the service contract and by the customer. Every day we’d get a number of calls from irate contract holders who asked why a particular repair wasn’t covered. We’d pull it up on the computer and find out that we’d already approved the repair, and their problem was with the repair facility and not with us.
It was unbelievable the stuff repair shops tried to pull on us. When I was a Claims Adjuster, we Adjusters would talk openly that considering what the repair shops tried to pull on us, knowing we were professionals, it was mind boggling to contemplate what they were pulling on an unsuspecting public. It was actually amusing. When the shops tried to pull a scam of some sort, they always thought they were being original. They didn’t realize we’d already seen the same thing a dozen times and could spot it a mile off.
With time, Adjusters dealt with the same shops often enough so that they got to know which ones would play it straight and which ones they had to watch. One of the worst was a large independent dealer in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. I even caught them buying equipment for their service department and trying to get it paid for by a phony claim on a phony service contract. Also, I swear half the crooks and scam artists in the automotive business are, or were, located on Jericho Turnpike on Long Island, NY, between Smithtown and Huntington Station. When Caller ID showed a “631” area code on an incoming call, you were automatically on guard.
I could write a book about all of this, and I may someday. I’m convinced to this day that everything negative and derogatory that has ever been said about the automotive repair business has been greatly understated. There are real scuzzballs out there.
Enough for now. I’ll see if I can get this to post.
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