A Repairify official interviewed on C&C Auto Show Saturday said that, in some cases, customers have to pick up the gap between cost and insurance coverage when he was asked about how an agreement the company made with GEICO is changing the perception of what the actual cost of a calibration is for repair shops. 

Radio show guests explained to Chris Chesney, Repairify vice president of training and organizational development, how prices outlined in a standardized pricing agreement with GEICO didn’t match the entire cost to do a scan or calibration. 

Mike Reynolds, Mobile Automotive Services Solutions president, in Charleston, South Carolina, said the calibration price set by GEICO is less than half the reasonable charge it costs to do a specialty vehicle, such as Volkswagen. 

Reynolds asked, “What are you doing with the shops that you work with? How are you getting them to be able to make a living?” 

“I was not involved in setting up this pricing,” Chesney replied. “I can’t comment on the pricing and I’m going to have to give you the facts and the truths based on what I know.” 

Chesney responded to multiple questions regarding the agreement this way. 

In response to Reynolds’s question, he said the pricing is likely based on scale. 

“We do thousands of calibrations a day,” Chesney said. 

He said this includes serving shops on site, remotely or at asTech’s own calibration centers. 

Reynolds said all the equipment needed to do an Audi or Volkswagen, not including the alignment rack, is in the tens of thousands. 

He said that most Audi/Volkswagen procedures for front radar start by saying the repairer must use specific tools. For example, the company sells two target boards and every Audi/Volkswagen dealer has to purchase those tools to do a calibration. 

Reynolds said this is because the Audi engineers decided those tools are needed to perform safe repairs. 

“That front radar on that vehicle is going to control the steering and braking and acceleration of that vehicle,” Reynolds said. “If I’m going to do that procedure, I can’t neglect to read the top of that procedure that states I need that special tool, which again all that equipment is incredibly expensive.” 

He said repairers can either do the procedure correctly or take shortcuts to meet the price point set out in the asTech and GEICO agreement. 

“I feel like it’s a race to the bottom,” Reynolds said. “I feel that you guys have forced the hand of people. They’re going to have to perform this calibration incorrectly. They’re going to have to cut corners. They’re going to have to use incorrect tooling.” 

Chesney said that’s not asTech’s intent. He said the company’s intent is to ensure that there is a proper and complete repair on every car. 

“We all have to make sure that No. 1, the vehicle’s calibrated properly,” Chesney said. “No. two, how do we manage and navigate the paying side of the equation? How do you get paid? How does the customer get the car back in a pre-collision state, or better, operating the way it was designed to operate and how does the customer come out whole at the end of the day? There are certain situations a shop is going to have a conversation with a customer about a gap. That gap needs to be covered.” 

Chesney said there might be larger gaps with high-end vehicles. He said the situations need to be managed individually. 

David Clark, CEO of Kendrick Paint & Body located in Augusta, Georgia, said the GEICO agreement leaves room in the language for items like labor to be negotiated. 

“You have to have that conversation with the carrier,” Chesney said following Clark’s comment. 

GEICO first announced the agreement to its Auto Repair Xpress (ARX) via an email in July. It says that the company’s position on the necessity of scanning a vehicle remains unchanged and that all claims will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. 

“We will base consideration for pre-/post-scans on the recommendations from the patented and proprietary asTech Rules Engine,” GEICO’s email says. “The Rules Engine uses data from tens of thousands of scans to determine when a remote OEM scan is needed or when a local OEM-compatible scan can be used, which has been verified to yield equivalent results to that of an OEM tool. GEICO shops using the asTech Rules Engine will be eligible for an OEM or OEM-compatible scan if they correctly follow the Rules Engine process in selecting the appropriate scan for the vehicle.” 

GEICO added that shops utilizing asTech’s All-In-One will receive prioritized access and special pricing. It notes the pricing structure will not address every scanning and calibration operation and “some negotiations may still need to be supported by good documentation.” 

“Shops not using the asTech® All-In-One device may need to supply additional documentation to justify procedures or pricing that deviates from those provided,” the email states. 

Reynolds said, “I think the issue is that it was negotiated with GEICO.” 

He said that GEICO will now say asTech charges an amount for a dynamic calibration and that’s all that will be paid. 

Carroll Proctor, with A.C. Proctor’s Paint and Body in Augusta, Georgia, said a perception is created any time a price is set on a procedure in the industry. He said consumers shouldn’t have to step in and pay for the gap because there is a perception of what a procedure cost that isn’t reality. 

“There are times where there’s a gap when there’s a third payer,” Chesney said. “There’s always, always the potential for a gap. That happens in medicine. That happens at the dentist.” 

Proctor said consumers’ expectation when visiting a hospital or a doctor is different than a vehicle repair. 

“When a customer gets their car fixed their expectation is the insurance pays and they have the deductible, that’s it,” Proctor said. 

Clark replied, “It is definitely changing. I don’t know if we’re headed in that direction as an industry. Is that going to be the new standard, that your coverage is only going to cover so much and you’re going to have to pay out-of-pocket the difference?”

Later in the conversation, Clark mentioned concerns about asTech’s top leadership. 

“You just got a brand new president right at the beginning of the year and his primary background is in insurance,” Clark said. “He was an insurance director and has never done anything in scans and calibrations but this is the gentleman that’s leading the push for you guys so I think that’s concerning for shops and should be concerning for consumers.” 

In February, asTech announced Craig Edmonds as its new president. Between 1987 and 2023, Edmonds held executive leadership roles at Progressive Insurance and Allstate. The GEICO agreement was announced five months later. 

Clark asked Chesney about the difference between OEM, OEM-compatible, and unverified scans. 

Chesney said that the OE scan used to be a tool that the manufacturer built but now is computer-based with software based on aspects that engineers provide. 

“It’s [asTech OEM scan tool] been validated against every single controller and module that they have in all of their vehicles,” Chesney said. “It takes a lot of work and a lot of time to make sure that the software has been validated to communicate and ask questions of the controllers on board the vehicle and can interpret the answers in return correctly. The scan tools aren’t magic in a box. They’re simply a computer asking another computer or a module a question” 

OEM compatible is a marketing term that asTech “fought over internally for probably half a year,” Chesney said. 

asTech decided to try to answer what the difference is between the different tools, including aftermarket tools, on the market. He said the company began testing tools at what he called the largest salvage yard globally of modern technology vehicles. 

Chesney said asTech technicians tested factory scan tools, asTech tools, and aftermarket scan tools on the vehicles. He said technicians would connect the factory tool and then send a report to their database. They’d then run a local scan with every aftermarket tool. 

“It was pretty apparent pretty quick which ones were just failing the grade and they got tossed to the side,” Chesney said. 

He said the testing progressed, and over the last four years, the company has captured about 2,400 or more make. model, and trim combinations of vehicles. He added he didn’t know the exact number. 

Each of the vehicles has been scanned multiple times, Chesney said. This includes hundreds of thousands of scans in the database that can be compared. 

asTech calls an aftermarket scan that produces the same report as an OEM scan an OEM-compatible scan, Chesney said. 

“We’ll identify that as an OEM-compatible scan and it’s an option for the shop to be able to choose that scan,” Chesney said. “For their pre-scan, the OEM scan can still be chosen and so we have an OEM which is the factory scan, the aftermarket scan which we validated against that, and then if we haven’t validated it or we’ve checked it and it doesn’t pass as the same, that’s an unverified scan.” 

Clark asked who certified the tool. 

Chesney responded that asTech did the certification. 

“OK, so you self-certified,” Clark said. “It’s hard for me, and probably other collision shops out there to hear that you guys are allowed to self-certify and this is OK by the insurance carriers or what’s promoted when we have to go out and we have to get I-CAR-certified or our technicians have to get welder certification to be a part of OEM programs but asTech has their own self-certification. That’s a problem for me and I feel like it’s a misconception to the consumer to say you’re OE-compatible.” 

Clark said the language could be changed to say asTech qualified the results on the tool. 

Reynolds asked if any of the data is published where vehicle owners and others can view it. 

Chesney responded that it is not published.

“It doesn’t sound very methodical,” Reynolds said. “It’s like, ‘We sent a bunch of vans to a junkyard to scan.’” 

Chesney responded, “It was done very scientifically.” 

Reynolds asked in response, “Maybe it was but why wasn’t the public able to see that?'” 

Clark added, “I think there just needs to be a secondary company that validates what you have. It just needs to be an outside service that comes in and validates what you do.” 

It comes down to safety, Clark said. 

“I wouldn’t want a $3 scan tool to scan my personal car and put my wife on the road when I knew the one that cost a hundred bucks is what is needed to be done to make sure the safety systems were working right,” Clark said. 

Chesney said the company is not taking a stance on whether an OEM tool or an OEM-compatible tool should be used. 

Clark noted that Nissan endorses asTech but for certain operations, the Rules Engine suggests an OE-compatible tool should be used. 

He asked, “How is that in line with the endorsement that you guys got from Nissan?” 

Chesney said asTech takes a neutral stance and provides two options. It is the shop’s choice. The Rules Engine’s base setting provides OEM-compatible options but it can be set up to the needs of the shop. This includes the settings excluding ONE Compatible scans, he said.

“We should be having a clear conversation with you upfront when we deliver the tool about how it operates and the options that are available to you so that we can set those rules how you want them set,” Chesney said.

In August, Subaru sent a letter to its Certified Collision Network (SCCN) reaffirming that it requires the use of Subaru Select Monitor (SSM) software for vehicle scans and does not approve “OEM compatible” scans. 

Clark also mentioned that asTech officials told shops at the Collision Industry Conference meeting in July that they would be made whole in the GEICO agreement 

Clark asked, “Why was that comment made? What has asTech done to make shops whole?” 

Chesney said that if the scan is prescribed as an OEM scan by the Rules Engine and the shop is not reimbursed for that OEM scan, asTech will make that shop whole. 

At the start of the radio show, Chesney apologized for asTech’s communication following the GEICO agreement. 

“I’ll apologize right up front that we did a poor job of communicating this,” Chesney said. “As an organization, we needed to do better in the way we communicated it and launched the program. We launched it quickly and not in a in a well-planned manner. I’ll stand up and say I’m sorry for that. At the end of the day, we’ve got to take care of the customer.” 

While representatives with asTech answered questions during the July meeting, they’ve avoided answering many questions from Repairer Driven News and the Society of Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS) about the agreement in the months following. 

Instead of answering a list of 25 questions sent by SCRS, Jason Vilardi, asTech VP of Sales, Insurance and Estimatics, told SCRS that asTech is focused on sharing details about the Rules Engine and testing process on its social media channels. He said these details should address many of the questions SCRS asked. 

Vilardi also said the company was directly speaking with customers. 

Days after SCRS sent the list of questions, Repairify posted on Facebook directing followers to The Rules Engine FAQ. 

The page seems to address a couple of the questions asked by SCRS. For example, it states that the Rules Engine can be customized to fit OEM certification requirements. However, it doesn’t provide an explanation of what a shop should do if they are certified and within GEICO’s network. Overall, the page avoids answering nearly all of the questions asked by SCRS. 

“We believe that the questions that have been posed are important for the industry to receive answers,” stated SCRS Executive Director Aaron Schulenburg, in an October SCRS release. “While both companies have indicated they will speak directly with their ‘partners’ and customers, the decisions they’ve reached together around their customer to standardize pricing and process are introducing new challenges in the claims process. We continue to receive communications from collision repair businesses around the country that are not asTech users, and are not GEICO ARX network shops, but who are being told that claim reimbursement is restricted to the pricing secured by GEICO through asTech.” 

Chesney echoed comments previously made by asTech by saying conversations will be held individually with customers. He also encouraged anyone having questions to stop by asTech’s booth at the SEMA Show this week in Las Vegas. 

He said there’s been a lot of misconceptions and misinformation or communication. 

“Again, we did a poor job of communicating it and there’s still a lot of work to be done to clarify what we’re trying to accomplish,” Chesney said. 

The next CIC meeting will be Nov. 5 in Las Vegas. The topic is not on the agenda but open mic opportunities are scheduled for 10:10 a.m., 12:15 p.m., 2:55 p.m., and 4:40 p.m. Click here for more information.

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Chris Chesney, Repairify Vice President of Training & Organizational Development, answers questions on C&C Auto Show/Screenshot from C&C Auto Show.