things to keep in mind when dealing with “preferred repair shops” for your insurance company. Pay attention to your est. Make sure if the car should get new parts it gets new parts, if its eligible for new OEM parts (irc its 2-3 years of age or newer oem replacement parts are mandatory, no aftermarket allowed) it gets written as such. Blends adjacent panels are often skipped to save the shop and insurance co a buck. Lots of ways they “work with the shop”. Think about it, the insurance company wants to save money on the repair, and the body shop wants to make the most profit they can. They negotiate together on the repairs. Body shops make MORE on fixing a fender than replacing it because they get more time to do the body work than they would just shooting it and replacing it. That’s just one simple way they will play the game to take advantage of you. There is a good reason Coles has hundreds of gieco cars there, because they make more profit and gieco saves more money by working together to save a buck here and there. I had a gieco lady tell me that I could straighten out the MK4 chrome rub strips that were mangled on the car instead of replacing them with new, because they are $300-450 a piece OEM only avail. That’s just one personal example I dealt with, Eric did the majority of the body work at CRC and that’s what he does now under his shop name… he has seen a mind blowing amount of games played by the “preferred body shop” nonsense.