How a supplement amends the first estimate after teardown

Hey folks! This is Mike and Tom from Pacific One Collision and Restoration.

Welcome to another Q&A session where I answer questions from you all on the internet.

Today's question is:

"How a supplement amends the first estimate after teardown"

Summary:

Mike explains that any body shop starts with a preliminary estimate based only on what's visible from the outer surface. With significant bumper damage, for example, many components hidden underneath can't be assessed until the vehicle is torn down. He notes that insurance companies write the same way, often with staff at desks examining photos who likewise can't see beneath the surface, and they pay the customer based on that first preliminary estimate. Once the customer brings the approved estimate in, the shop tears the vehicle down, identifies all additional broken items and any added body or frame repair, and files a supplement. Further teardown can produce another supplement. A good body shop, he says, typically has only one or two supplements rather than nine, because it aims to capture every needed repair on that first teardown; a final supplement is often just a parts price change.

Answer:

Whenever you get into an accident, any body shop is going to write what they call the preliminary estimate, and we have to make sure we understand the language. An estimate is an estimate; it's just what we see and what it might take to do the repair. However, you have to consider that if you have significant bumper damage, we can only see what's on the outer surface. Underneath that bumper there are a lot of components, and we won't be able to tell the true damage until we do a teardown of the vehicle. So when we submit our first estimate to the insurance company, it's always a preliminary estimate based off what we see. That is also the way every single insurance company writes their estimate; they generally have people sitting at desks looking at photos who can't see underneath. Well, we can't either, unless we tear the vehicle down. So the insurance companies will write and pay you based off that first preliminary estimate. Once you take your vehicle to the shop and hand them the approved insurance estimate, what we do is tear the vehicle down and file what's called a supplement. We tear it down, identify all the additional broken items, identify any additional body repair, and if there's frame repair needed, we'll write that out on a supplement one. In some cases, if we do further teardown or identify additional items, there can be another supplement on top of that. If you're a good body shop, you typically won't have nine supplements; you'll usually only have one, maybe two, because you try to capture every repair needed on that first preliminary teardown. That last supplement is usually a parts price change or something that changed in the pricing.