Originally Posted by
Ithaca Gunner
Here's a different view, I worked 9 years for a very busy body shop in the Harrisburg PA region. Now, it's been 15 years since, however at the time USAA, State Farm, and Erie were always a pleasure to work with. On newer cars and trucks, it was OEM parts, (read, original factory parts that fit!). Farmers, Liberty Mutual, Hartford, Met Life, Geiko and a few others were okay... They would specify used parts a lot, but still OEM. Nationwide was bareable, their adjusters were at least reasonable to work with. The worst of the big insurance firms were All State and Progressive, with Progressive being at the bottom of the barrel specifying cheap made in china garbage parts that didn't even come close to fitting right!
In the case of a person with good insurance being hit by someone with garbage insurance specifying chinese parts we advised them to go to their insurance company to sue the other company for OEM parts. Why pay for good insurance only to be hit by someone with bad insurance and have your new car/truck repaired with chinese junk? All State and Progressive always fought tooth and nail to repair as cheaply as possible. Neither were, ''blue ribbon'' partners of our shop. We kept a ''blue ribbon'' status with most other companies because they didn't put up a fight about fair repairs if their insured was at fault and the injured had good insurance, most times they simply agreed to fix the car according to the injured's insurance specs. The ''not at fault's'' insurance would pay us then go after the, ''at fault's'' insurance for payment. Choose a good body shop that's on YOUR side and read carefully the repair estimate. If an older car, you'll probably have to deal with used and some after market parts, (used OEM is better than new after market in my opinion). OEM=new factory original manufacture. LKQ=like kind and quality, (used OEM salvage part). AM=new aftermarket garbage. In most states, if you're not at fault, you do not have to settle for what the at fault driver's insurance specifies just to save themselves money.