Also Shane talks about a little know sanding method you can start using
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Keith Cosentino: I’m Keith Cosentino, and he is Shane Jacks, and this is the PDR College Podcast, where we are going to be talking to you about everything paintless dent removal. We’re gonna talk tools that are new, we’re gonna talk business techniques, we’re gonna talk about everything that happens in our business, but we are going to be spending the majority of our time talking about the business techniques for PDR and running a PDR business.
Shane, tell these boys why that’s so important.
Shane Jacks: Because when I make it rain, somebody needs to be thinking about building an ark.
Keith Cosentino: It’s raining like that. It’s different from my days in college when I had to make it rain in the Laundromat.
Shane Jacks: In the Laundromat.
Keith Cosentino: It wasn’t even real money. It was those coins.
Shane Jacks: Making it hail then, those coins.
Keith Cosentino: Tokens. Now, this is Episode 9. There are nine episodes in the PDR College Podcast.
Shane Jacks: That’s awesome.
Keith Cosentino: It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?
Shane Jacks: Yeah, it’s gone by pretty quick, actually.
Keith Cosentino: It really has. I’ve been excited to hear from all the guys all over the world about the stuff they’re using and making more money. It makes me so happy.
Shane Jacks: And stoked. You hear from guys from England and Mars and places like that. It’s pretty good. It’s pretty awesome.
Keith Cosentino: Mars cars are crashing now.
Shane Jacks: They’re crafts. They’re not cars. They’re called crafts on that planet.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, we’ve got downloads all over the place, in places I frankly wouldn’t wanna visit, but they are listening to the podcast.
Shane Jacks: Yes, they are, and responding.
Keith Cosentino: A shout-out to my Romanian brothers.
Shane Jacks: Nothing but love.
Keith Cosentino: Where you at, Saudi Arabia? I am not making this stuff up.
Shane Jacks: Good stuff.
Keith Cosentino: What’s the topic tonight, Shane?
Shane Jacks: The topic is how to flip the matrix so you can make more money.
Keith Cosentino: Wait a second, wait a second. The matrix is designed so you make less money.
Shane Jacks: We’re gonna flip that thing. It’s not designed to make less money. It is designed to make the insurance company keep as much of their money as possible.
Keith Cosentino: Ergo, you are making less.
Shane Jacks: You are making less, but we’re gonna flip that on them. The matrix is a guideline. In many instances, it’s a guideline, and then in other instances, it’s not even that, and we’ll get into that here momentarily. But that’s what we’re gonna talk about tonight, Keith. So, something I deal with a lot, yourself not quite as much, but you know how to do it.
Keith Cosentino: No, not quite as much. Well, yes, I do, and I’ve got – for our Cali listeners, and I know we’ve got a lot of you guys – shout-out to my Cali boys – we’ve got a different set of problems here because we don’t ever see hail. So, I can share what I do when hail does come into your town. Not a storm, because that’s almost never gonna happen here because our climate is so nice, but we will get people bringing damage back in or dealers buying hail-damaged rigs, either on purpose or on accident, and bringing them back and asking us to fix them.
And we can really get shafted hard if you don’t know what to do when you get a hail car. Those things’ll chew you up and spit you out.
Shane Jacks: For sure. And we have it here, in the South anyway, or everywhere I’ve been from Texas east, and I’ve been that far – the middle of Texas and east. We have a different set of problems as far as these adjusters, these insurance companies, they see it constantly. Most of the towns I’ve been in, including the town that I live in here in SoCar, they’re used to it here and they know what they’re doing, they know what they’re writing. Their goal, again, is to save their company as much money as possible. That affects their bottom line, their pockets, the adjustors themselves.
And so, they’re doing their job. It’s not like we’re fighting these guys, and that’s a problem that most of the – well, not most, but a lot of hail techs come into it, they believe that they’ve got to fight these adjusters and these insurance companies right off the bat, and that is not the thing to do, necessarily.
Keith Cosentino: You know what? Let’s take a little step back for a history lesson. Maybe, you guys out in California, not only have you never seen a hail car, maybe you’ve never even heard of this matrix that we’re talking about. So, let’s take a little step back in history and talk about what is a matrix, why does it exist, what are we talking about in the first place.
Generally, when somebody gets hailed on, you got a car full of dents. Where are you going? You’re going to a body shop. Are you paying out of pocket? Probably not. You’re gonna make an insurance claim. So the insurance, up until PDR was the preferred method of repair for hail, were paying body shops to replace panels or mud them all up and paint the cars. Am I right so far?
Shane Jacks: You are correct.
Keith Cosentino: Okay, and then PDR guys started coming into the scene heavy, heavy, heavy, and doing all these cars. And I was not in the hail scene at this time, or even in PDR for that matter, at this time because this is a long time ago, relatively speaking. But from what I understand, PDR guys were coming in and getting basically conventional repair prices for the hail, hail repairs for PDR, which was killer money.
Insurance companies got tired of cutting all those checks and started coming up with these matrixes that are basically sheets of paper – well, they don’t have to be paper. They are formulas for estimating hail damage in a relatively uniform fashion so they can better keep a handle on the costs of what a hail repair should cost them nationwide. And you can go ahead and get into it from there, Shane.
Shane Jacks: Okay, yeah, the insurance companies, they did this. It wasn’t just them. They were looking for a way. Again, they were paying conventional costs and seeing these guys run through these cars. And they – my guess, I don’t know this for a fact, but my guess is that, just like you said, they were tired of paying those crazy – well what they thought were crazy, what I thought was freaking awesome – costs or prices for these cars for PDR guys to do the repairs on them, that they’re paying them conventional prices or dang-near conventional prices. And so they started pushing –
Keith Cosentino: If I understand it right, some of them came from a collaboration between large PDR companies, hail companies, and either local, regional, or national insurance companies. In an effort to try to secure more work, they were agreeing to do simpler, maybe in some cases, lower prices. Am I understanding that properly?
Shane Jacks: Yeah. You just stole everything that I was about to say, so … good job. You’re exactly right. That’s what I was about to say is you can call it whatever you want. You can say they got in bed with the insurance companies. They did what they had to do. They secured more work and started these matrix – how do you say the plural of matrix?
Keith Cosentino: Well, if I went to college, I would tell you, but instead, I’m in the PDR College.
Shane Jacks: We’re gonna go fancy and say matrices.
Keith Cosentino: That sounds retarded. Matrixes.
Shane Jacks: That sounds hick.
Keith Cosentino: If I had two copies of The Matrix for sale, and you came and knocked them off the table, I would call them my matrixes and make you put them back on my table.
Shane Jacks: I’d call them matrii.
Keith Cosentino: And we’d be fighting.
Shane Jacks: Yeah. But anyway, that’s how the matrixes – that was hard for me to say, now that we’ve been arguing about it – that’s how the matrixes came in to being, and they have been “adjusted” over time and not in a good way. And there are, again, these matrixes – let’s talk about what the matrix – we kinda talked about what it is. It’s 1 to 5 dime size, 1 to 5 nickel size, 1 to 5 quarter, 1 to 5 half dollar, and 1 to 5 oversize, and then it goes up from there number-wise.
There are, for you Cali boys that may have never seen one, these matrixes have different numbers on each of the panels, and for different sizes and different numbers in the category. And they max out at a certain number, depending on the panel. It can be 200 if it’s a roof, and it can be as little as 30, I believe it is, on fenders. So, after that, it maxes out –
Keith Cosentino: I still think we’re moving too fast for my friends in Temecula.
Shane Jacks: You think so?
Keith Cosentino: Temecula, just the same way, you guys, we count a bag of avocados, you count the dents on a panel. If you need to take your shoes off, you do it, if you need to count to 20. You count the dents, and then you look on the sheet. There’s a corresponding line for the hood you just counted. Hood. How big are the dents? They’re either dime, nickel, quarter, or larger. There’s a row for each. And if you’ve got –
Shane Jacks: I’m gonna stop you here simply because if we go this route, we can watch an avocado tree grow quicker than you’re gonna get done explaining this thing.
Keith Cosentino: All right. Let’s just assume everybody knows what we’re talking about then.
Shane Jacks: It’s a matrix where there are prices on there for X amount of dents X size. And these matrixes, they have been adjusted over the years, like I said a few minutes ago, and not necessarily for the better.
Now, are these things, are they set in stone? Well, I’m gonna say no, not in any case are they set in stone. Even at a DRP shop where you’re doing the work for, they have agreed to work with the matrix. It’s just like body work. It’s something that you can work with. You can’t say that everybody man – you take a car into a body guy and the dent is the size of two basketballs put together, that is going to be X hours, period, no matter what make of car, no matter what depth of the damage. That’s asinine. That’s incorrect, and nobody man on Earth is going to agree to that.
So, this thing is a guideline, and if you treat it as a guideline and you treat the adjusters with a little bit of respect instead of an attitude right off the bat, you can explain to them why you need more on X dent or X panel. Does that make sense?
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, it does, and I’ve looked at a few of them because I’d been curious, and I’ve noticed that there’s a line. If there’s a certain amount of dents, you reach a certain threshold, and they move to what they abbreviate as CR, which is “conventional repair.” And some of them are numbers that I would happily fix, like, I don’t know, 150 some-odd nickel dents on a panel. Well, yeah, it’s a lot, but it’s not that many, and it’s going to conventional.
Well, conventional is a butcher job, and the reason it’s on there is either one of two reasons: They don’t think a tech can do it, or, B, they think it’ll be cheaper to go conventional.
Shane Jacks: It’s often a mix of both.
Keith Cosentino: Conventional’s expensive. A lot of times if there’s that much damage, a shop wants to replace the panel. So if you’ve got a replacement panel and a repaint, and you can do the work, you don’t need to sign off just because it says “conventional or lower your price.” You can go in there and submit a higher price to them. They’re still gonna save money compared to a conventional.
Shane Jacks: Absolutely. Even if it’s – fenders, I believe, max out at around the $250.00 range for dents. Okay, I don’t know where that number comes from. If a body shop is going to replace a fender, they are going to have to blend into the door. They are going to have to blend into the hood, if they’re doing it correctly. And so your fender, I don’t care if that thing costs 150.00 bucks aftermarket, you’re still not going to get in there for under the 250.00.
So if you talk to the adjuster with a common-sense approach with them, they are, most of the time, they’re going to agree to it. It’s when you come in and, “I ain’t – You crazy – I ain’t doing it for that,” immediately, although they are trying to save money for their company, they can justify not paying you a lower amount because they can say exactly as you said earlier, Keith, “A PDR tech can’t repair that.”
So if you immediately put that seed in his mind that you’re a jerk, he can justify it either way.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, it’s not his car. He doesn’t care if they paint it.
Shane Jacks: Perzactly. So, these matrixes, they account for – well, what kind of upcharges do you typically see, Keith, on a matrix? I know you’ve seen enough to know these upcharges. What are they?
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, but I also don’t typically see a matrix, only when I look them up out of curiosity. But we’ve got things like aluminum, 25 percent more – add 25 percent to the repair cost. Double panel, which is kind of a term from the ‘90s, as far as I’m concerned, but double panel, which to me can either mean I gotta go behind the brace or I’ve gotta glue pull it, which are totally different to me. Oversize, extra large roof. Those are the ones I can remember.
Shane Jacks: That’s basically all they have on most of the matrix. Basically, all they have is SUV, which is an oversize SUV or truck oversize, and aluminum, and double panel. Those are the only three that you will typically see on the matrix.
Now, if you take a common-sense approach to it, does that make any sense that those are the only three that are on there? Zero sense, to me.
Keith Cosentino: “But it’s not on the matrix.”
Shane Jacks: “I can’t charge more cuz it ain’t on the matrix.”
Keith Cosentino: That’s the same mentality as, “I can’t charge $150.00 for this door ding. There’s somebody across town that would do it for 50.00.”
Shane Jacks: That’s right, but that’s stupid thinking. And when an adjuster comes in – and I know I’m talking a lot about the adjuster right now. We’re gonna get the actual customer in on this here shortly in our discussion.
Keith Cosentino: But the adjuster is your customer in a lot of sense, especially at these catastrophe sites.
Shane Jacks: You are right. But, and that’s exactly what I’m gonna talk about here in just a few minutes, what I wanted to talk about here in a few minutes, but you can still get the customer involved also if the conditions permit, if it comes to that, and we will talk about that. Well, I guess we’ll go ahead and talk about it, since we’re on the subject.
Just like Keith said, at this point, the customer has taken the car to the body shop, they have given the body shop the permission to do the repairs, and the body shop has commissioned you, has hired you to do the repairs on the car. Okay, so you’re working for the body shop, the body shop is working for the customer, the customer has signed it over to the body shop, and now the insurance company is involved, and they are basically your customer.
Now, there have been times this past year I’ve talked about this a few times, Keith, online with different techs. We had a Lexus sail panel. The guy was adamant about no paint work on his car. And we informed the customer and the insurance adjuster that there was no way to repair this sail panel for the $400.00 that he was thinking about giving us on this sail panel. And basically, the insurance adjuster said, “Well, that’s all we can go up to.” Now, that is complete B.S. They can go higher.
So, we called the customer, and, again, we didn’t give him attitude with this. We weren’t trying to go around the adjustor. We were very nice with him about it, and called the customer and said, “Look, they are wanting to cut your sail panel off,” because that was the only other option. This was like a $1,200.00 repair to cut it off, and put a new one on, and paint it. “This is what the insurance wants to do to your car, Mr. Smith.”
Keith Cosentino: So, they were gonna section just the rail and the sail, and leave the back and the quarter?
Shane Jacks: I believe it was. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was just the rail and the sail, and leave the quarter. And they were going to replace the hood.
So, we called Mr. Smith and told him, “Hey, this is what they want to do to your car. The only way for us to do this is for you to convince them that this is what you want done, your hood and your sail panel.” And he called them and –
Keith Cosentino: What model car are we talking about? I like to picture it.
Shane Jacks: RX, Lexus RX. And this thing, we ended up getting, I think it was little over 1,100.00 bucks on that sail panel alone. And the insurance adjuster had no – once the customer called him and they had a discussion about it, he was okay with it. He understood the customer. Because the money was –
Keith Cosentino: Well, why wouldn’t he be? I mean, if they’re contracted, and this is the mindset that I always use, which I’m sure you have too, Shane. The insurance company’s gonna pay X to repair the car. The customer says, “Okay, great. I don’t want this type of repair. I want this type of repair.” Same endpoint for the customer. What do they care if they pay you 1,200.00 or the body shop 1,200.00?
Shane Jacks: Right, and the insurance company has a little bit of liability in this entire thing. They look at it as, and they are correct in many ways, lots of PDR techs are not capable of doing this kind of damage, so they’re trying to – I honestly believe some are trying to protect the customer, I honestly believe that, from a shoddy repair.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, and if you’ve seen a lot of hacked-up work, I’m sure, yeah.
Shane Jacks: Oh, yeah, which you have also, I’m sure.
Keith Cosentino: No, as an adjuster, I’m saying, if they’ve seen –
Shane Jacks: Oh, oh, oh, yes, yeah. So, they’re trying to – but he was really cool, and we got our money. Again, the insurance adjuster is your customer at this time, but the end customer, the end consumer is the guy that owns the car, and he really has the ultimate say.
Don’t get them involved on every situation. You’re really going to dig a hole for yourself if you’re at a large storm and have to see this adjuster every other day. Only do it under good conditions, under good terms, and simply out of the request of the customer. Don’t be calling the customer going, “You know what that son of a gun wants to do to your car? He wants to put a hood on it.” Leave it up to them to push that, and don’t push the issue. You can push the issue, but don’t be a jerk about it. Don’t be a jerk about it.
Again, going back to the matrix, these things that are on there, these upcharges that are typical – the 25 percent for aluminum hood, 25 percent for oversize vehicle, and 25 percent for double panel – there’re so many other things. The No. 1 that is huge to me is a high-end car. Any of the high-end – BMW, Mercedes, Audi – heck, it doesn’t even have to be a high-end car. It can just be a PIB car – pain in the butt – that’s like any Volkswagen, period. They are a nightmare, for me anyway. They may be gravy to you, but to me, they are a nightmare.
Mark them up 25 percent, every freaking panel, if you have to, and just justify it. The body man in there, he’s not going to say that every car’s the same and every metalwork’s the same, and he is going to talk to the adjuster about it. And if he can explain it and he can justify it, he will get more money. You can do the same thing. Just talk to him, tech to adjuster, just, “Hey, dude, this is a tough car. This is worth more. This dent right here, or this series of dents right here, on another car would take me 30 minutes. On this car, it’s gonna take me an hour and a half.” Why not 50 percent? Why not 25 percent?
So, you’ve got high-end cars, pain-in-the-butt cars, ribbed roof panels. Those are a –
Keith Cosentino: I hate them. I hate them.
Shane Jacks: Oh, they’re horrible. They’re absolutely horrible. What’s another one, Keith? You’ve had this experience in the last three days.
Keith Cosentino: Heavily braced roofs.
Shane Jacks: Heavily braced roofs. Example, TSX.
Keith Cosentino: Yes, TSX sunroof. I guess they all have sunroofs, but –
Shane Jacks: But like the four-door Accord and the four-door – well, the four-door Accord –
Keith Cosentino: They’re the same way, aren’t they?
Shane Jacks: Yeah, they’re the same way, but you can get around a lot better because it doesn’t have the quarter window there. You’ve actually got the rear door to work around, but Keith and I were discussing this earlier. I will even, on the two-door Civics with a sunroof, and two-door TSXs with a sunroof, and two-door Accords with a sunroof, I will actually pay to have the back – I won’t pay, but I will make the insurance company –
Keith Cosentino: You’re thinking of an RSX. TSX is a four-door.
Shane Jacks: My bad. RSX, I’m sorry. I will make them take that back glass out and sometimes the quarter glasses also, so you can have access with your arms, and get in there and really work those things like they’re supposed to. So again, that’s something else that you can mark up. Is it a double panel? Yes. Are you glue pulling it? No, but it’s still a pain in the butt. It’s still gonna take you twice as long as a normal car, and why can’t you explain that to the adjuster? You can.
Keith Cosentino: Have you ever had an adjuster question your upcharges?
Shane Jacks: Oh, yeah, they question them constantly because you know what they’re doing, Keith? They’re looking at the sheet, just like you’re looking at the sheet.
Keith Cosentino: But I mean if you say, “Yes, there’s X amount of dents, they’re this size, so I click that box, and then, oh, a roof, there’s bracing, double paneled.”
Shane Jacks: Again, I have had them question it because most guys are not going to put that – we sit here, and we look at this, and we think we’re shackled to this sheet. A lot of techs think we’re shackled to this sheet and we’re married to it, and we’re really not. Yes, I have had them question, “Well, why did you double panel, but why did you mark up the roof 25 percent?” And I will take them, and I will say, “Here, check it out,” if I’ve got it apart. If it isn’t apart yet, I’ll explain it to them and say, “Look, this roof, this Accord two-door roof is a real pain in the butt, and I can’t get on it well. I’m marking it up double panel because that’s what it is. It’s a difficult – it’s not a typical roof, period.”
Keith Cosentino: And basically what you’re saying when you say “typical roof” is a four-door Accord, no sunroof.
Shane Jacks: Correct.
Keith Cosentino: Or Corolla or something that’s wide open with two cross-braces.
Shane Jacks: Right. And with the high-end cars – BMWs or Audis or Volkswagens – the glue that holds the braces in place, it’s –
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, the adhesive, the brace adhesive.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, the brace adhesive, it’s insane. It’s impossible, and it’s three times as hard. Why not get 25 more percent if it’s freaking three times as hard? Explain it to them. They will understand. If they don’t, then you’ve got to back up and punt.
I have known techs to, “Okay then, as soon as you leave, I’m gonna call in another supplement.” Call in three or four of them. The adjuster will keep coming back out there. And they will just keep calling back for another supplement, and finally, somebody has to give. Normally, it’s the customer calling, asking, “Hey, when are you gonna freaking start working on my car?” and you can say, “Well, the adjuster and I are going back and forth.” So at that point, you have a decision to make: who to get involved with that discussion. But again –
Keith Cosentino: So, maybe I’m naïve because I do my hail repairs here where there’s no catastrophe site set up. There’s no adjusters that are used to playing this game. I’ll look at the matrix out of curiosity, and then I’ll talk to my buddy who’s the adjuster on the car – that’s why I got the call – and I’ll say, “Hey, what’s it gonna cost you guys to paint that roof? 2 grand? All right, I’m gonna put it at 1,600.00.” It’s cheaper than painting. It’s more than the matrix. I say, “Well, it’s cheaper than painting, buddy. You wanna paint it and pay more?” “No, all right, do it.”
That’s usually the end of it. Am I missing something?
Shane Jacks: Here’s what you’re missing, Keith. Okay, you’re talking to the adjuster buddy of yours, correct?
Keith Cosentino: Well, I’m talking to the adjuster for the insurance company. The estimators are my buddies at the shop, but I’ve still gotta take it to the adjuster if I’m submitting the estimate for the first time and they’re there. Sometimes, it is the estimator for the DRP shop, the estimator proper, if it’s not.
Shane Jacks: Okay, the adjusters may just be naïve because of where you’re at.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. They’re not used to seeing this stuff.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, because if you’re a DRP shop – I know State Farm is this way. I know this for a fact. If you are a DRP shop here in South Carolina, we get enough hail that they know what’s going on. If you are a DRP for State Farm, you have to sign an agreement that you are going to adhere to the matrix. So if Mr. State Farm Adjuster comes over and he’s got the matrix that your DRP shop has agreed to adhere to, you can explain it. You can explain why you’re charging more and upcharge, and they will do it.
However, as far as a count is concerned, if you’re talking just, okay, it’s a wide-open Corolla. It’s a four-door Corolla roof, very little bracing, and there are 40 dents on it, and it’s a DRP shop, you’re going to have a really hard time trying to convince them to pay you $1,600.00 because they’re going to put their thumb on the body shop, and they’re gonna say, “You promised to provide us with PDR – I don’t care who it’s from – but you promised, you signed the paper to provide us PDR for this, what’s on the matrix.” Does that make sense?
Keith Cosentino: Yeah.
Shane Jacks: So, you’re kinda bound to it in that way, in that sense, if you are in a DRP shop. But again, the thing is a guideline. You can go up a bit, you can upcharge, you can explain why you’re upcharging with no problem whatsoever.
I don’t have a problem, honestly, with the matrix, as long as you can upcharge, and you can explain, and you can get those upcharges. Would I want it to be more? Yeah, but even as a just a decent tech, you can make a ton of money. Is there money left on the table there? I guess there is, but if you’re working for a DRP shop that has agreed to this, you gotta do it. So, there’s a lot of money to be made by that matrix.
Keith Cosentino: Let me ask you this, Shane. Do you have a system for estimating a hail car from the moment you see it?
Shane Jacks: Yes, for sure.
Keith Cosentino: Like you have it down to a complete system about when you’re gonna count dents, what device you’re gonna use to count them, and then when you’re gonna take the thing apart, are you gonna take it apart yourself, are you gonna have the shop take it apart, etc., etc.?
Shane Jacks: Okay, that’s kind of going apart from estimating, the whole taking apart and everything.
Keith Cosentino: Well, to me, it’s part of it because you’re estimating. You’re gonna include your labor, or you’re gonna sub it to the shop or have them do it, or however you wanna term it, but if you’re writing an estimate, you have to make a decision, I assume, beforehand whether you want to take it apart or whether you don’t.
Shane Jacks: I never want to take it apart, I can tell you that. Ever. Period.
Keith Cosentino: A lot of guys are kinda greedy, right, and they’re like, “Well, man, there’s $500.00 worth of work here.”
Shane Jacks: That is insanity, in my opinion. Okay, if it’s one hail car or if it’s five hail cars, go for it, bucko. If you’re at a big storm and there are hundreds of cars possibly lined up for you – well, it’s not insanity if you’re not the greatest tech in the world, if you’re slow. If you’re fast, you are wasting your – this is my opinion, so don’t jump on me – you are wasting your time by doing R&I. You can make a lot more money letting somebody else do the R&I. Hire a guy to do your R&I, pay him 100.00 bucks a car, and you can make some money off of that R&I. That’s what happens in a lot of big storms.
But even if I’m at a body shop and I’m the only guy there, the very first thing I do is go to the manager and say, “Do you have one of these techs that would like to do my R&I? I don’t need any money off of it,” and they’ll usually bite. Because I hate R&I, I can make a lot more money pushing dents than I can doing R&I.
Keith Cosentino: I don’t like it either, and I usually do the same thing because my shops are also not used to giving up the work because it’s so onesy-twosy. We don’t get the storms, so they’re not super stoked about giving me the job. They’re giving up a 6, $8,000.00 repair, so I’ll usually say, “You know what? You guys keep all the R&I in-house, and I’ll just do the repairs,” so they still get a grand or two from all the R&I time. And secretly, I’m like you – I just don’t want to do it. I’d rather push steel.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, as far as a system to what I do, if it’s here at my shop and it’s a retail customer, I will look up the R&I times at the very end. Oftentimes, they have come to me before they have an insurance estimate. They still have to go through their insurance company. I actually very rarely look up the R&I times.
If it’s a – I’m gonna run through this really quick, Keith – if it’s a retail customer, they bring a hail car in to me, I bring it in the shop. I use the matrix that I use, and I go panel by panel. That’s the way I write it down is by the way it goes. It actually goes around the car. It’ll start with, I think if I’m not mistaken, you’ll have hood, roof, deck lid, and then it starts at the right fender, right front door, right rear door, right quarter, and it kind of goes around the car. So, it makes it convenient for you to walk around the car and write them down.
Before I actually fill out the estimate, the matrix –
Keith Cosentino: Can I ask you a question that might seem stupid? Do you set up your lights for the estimate?
Shane Jacks: It depends. If I’m inside here at the shop, no, I do not. I’ll use the overhead fluorescents. I can count just as good with those. But if you’re in somewhere that doesn’t have good hard fluorescent lines or otherwise, you definitely need to. Outside – do not estimate a hail car outside. Ever. Period. Ever.
Keith Cosentino: I can tell you firsthand, every time I’ve counted a hail car and threw my lights on it, I’ve found 1, 2, 3, 4 dents that I didn’t see before. I mean, if we’re talking big giant boulders, no, of course not, but little dime dents? Yeah, all the time.
Shane Jacks: Yeah. But I will start –
Keith Cosentino: You get them all written down on the sheet.
Shane Jacks: Well, before I write them down on the sheet, I actually will – and this helps you a lot when you’re estimating, with the insurance companies, with the adjusters – take one of the erasable paint markers. I will circle – you don’t have to circle every single dent. It depends – and you get to know the adjusters.
What I will do is I’ll take the worst quadrant of the roof, the worst quarter of the roof, and I will circle every single dent on that quarter of the roof. I’ll count it, I’ll multiply it times 4, and there are 60 pink circles in that one quarter. So, if there’s 60 pink circles in that quarter, there’s what? 240 dents on the roof. I’ll write, “240 quarter, 4 oversized.” I will mark every oversize because they will want to see that, on the entire roof, not just in that quadrant. But I’ll do that on the hood, roof, and trunk. The trunk I’ll normally do half. The hood and the roof I will do quarters, a quarter of the hood, a quarter of the roof. Multiply it times 4, that’s the number I have. I’ll write those numbers on the panels so if I need to take pictures, I’ll take pictures.
If it’s side panels or rails, sail panels, I’m going to circle every single dent on those because it’s easy enough. There are normally not hundreds of dents on those.
Keith Cosentino: That’s interesting. That’s a tip that could have saved me probably at least a few hours last year because I’ve always circled the whole roof, whole hood, whole deck lid for fear of missing. If there’s 60 here, there might be 80 in the other quadrant and I’m gonna go to the next level in the matrix or whatever, so I’ve always circled them all. Plus, I like to take the picture with every single circle and the number written, so if anyone ever asks me what I’m doing, I can show them this picture of all the circles. But man, that would save me a lot of time just doing a quarter of it.
Shane Jacks: It’s not as important in an area like yours, Keith, when you’re doing a handful of cars, but when you’re running through a storm, man, if you’re missing five dents but you’re saving an hour to two hours a day on five cars that you’ve written, it’s huge.
Keith Cosentino: Don’t tell me half an hour’s not important. This is a guy that’s skipping lunch just to make money. If I can save half an hour estimating this car – I mean, it takes me like an hour and 15 minutes to –
Shane Jacks: But what I’m saying is that if you’re missing out on 60.00 bucks, it doesn’t even out. You know what I’m saying? If the half hour – But when you’re talking about hundreds of cars, yeah, you’re definitely; you’re beating the odds if you do it the way I’m talking.
I’m not saying don’t circle every dent. For y’all that like to do that, go ahead, keep going, keep at it. I just, if I miss three or four dents, it’s most likely – the odds are in my favor that it’s not going to push it over to the next. If I get it and it looks like, hey, 15, 20 more dents over those three panels, if I could squeeze it out, then I’ll go ahead and circle it all. Does that make sense? I kinda said that fast.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, and I also would imagine, when you’re doing that, just writing a quadrant, you’re gonna eyeball it and pick the worst quadrant, and start there.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, that’s why I said always pick the worst, what appears to be the worst quadrant, and do that. And take the picture if you have to, with your cell phone, email it.
But anyway, so then I will write those down on the sheet, on the matrix, and like I said, I normally, 99 percent of the time, I do not figure up R&I times. If they’ve already got an estimate from the body shop, the R&I times are always there. If they’ve got one from the insurance company, the R&I times are there. Those are things that are not really – that’s what they have in their computer for R&I for a headliner is X.
Now, you can get more out of that, and I do it constantly by saying, “No, that headliner has to come all the way down. So does the sunroof cassette,” because they will leave that out. They will give you partial headliner drop, which is stupid, and all you gotta do is say, “No, I don’t want a partial headliner drop. I want this bad boy all the way out because I need to drop this cassette.” And then you rea –
Keith Cosentino: And that means windshield or rear glass out oftentimes.
Shane Jacks: Right. And this is where I’ll reason with them. I’ll go, “Okay, you don’t want to pay me double panel, you don’t want to pay me an upcharge for this sunroof cassette being in the way, but you also don’t wanna pay me to drop it? How about you give me one or the other?” You know what I’m saying?
Keith Cosentino: Yeah.
Shane Jacks: Just reason with them, and they will understand. They will understand where you’re coming from.
Keith Cosentino: So, are you trying to wring out every – if you’re doing your own R&I, and say you’re at a place that has just two, three cars or something like that – are you writing down R&I for every conceivable piece that could come off – belt molding, mirror, fender liner, headlight? I mean, are you writing everything down?
Shane Jacks: Not myself, and here’s my reasoning behind that. I will always get a fender liner, always, even if I’m just peeling it back, because I do have to get that fender liner out of the way. And I look at it as I don’t have any work around that fender liner, that’s kind of my upcharge, you know what I’m saying? It’s not that much of a pain in the butt, but if the liner were –
Keith Cosentino: Unless it’s a BMW.
Shane Jacks: Oh, yeah. If that liner were completely out, it’d be easier on me. So, I will always charge for taillights on the quarter panel. Now, what I’m not gonna do is, if I’m not taking a belt molding off, Keith, I am not charging for that.
And oftentimes – and here’s again, this is me kind of buttering up the adjusters – they will ask a lot of times, “Well, don’t you need this off?” and I’ll go, “You know what, man? I could work around that. I’m going to work around that, and I don’t want to charge you for that if I’m not gonna do it.” It’s like it flips a switch in their brain, and they’re going to work with you on everything after that. I scratch their back, they scratch mine. You’ve got, again, don’t act like a typical freaking dent guy and have an attitude as soon as they walk up. Work with them, and they’ll work with you.
Keith Cosentino: So, there’s a lot of parallels here between running a successful retail business and handling a storm properly.
Shane Jacks: It’s the exact same. All of these principles that we teach, Keith – you know this, I know you’re setting me up for this – all these principles go all across life, whether it be dealing with a retail customer, dealing with an adjuster, or dealing with your wife at home. A lot of it there, honestly, these things transcend one area, the retail business, what we talk about a lot of times, and they apply to so many other things, insurance adjusters being one of them.
Keith Cosentino: So, what happens when you write the estimate properly, you do everything fair, you submit it to them, and they say, “We’re not paying X, and we’re not paying Z. We’ll pay you 200.00 for this fender and 400.00 for the roof,” and they’re smashed? What’s the first thing you do, Shane?
Shane Jacks: The first thing I do? I try to reason out why, ask why, and sometimes –
Keith Cosentino: Because I’ve asked that question before and have gotten this answer, “Well, that’s just all my system will allow me.”
Shane Jacks: Again, that’s when you reason with them. You have to find out why. That’s what I was just saying. So if you find out why and you ask why, and they, “Well, that’s all my system will allow me,” as we said earlier, we say, “Okay, well, let’s back up, Joe. You’re giving me $200.00 on this fender, and I’ve written it for 325.00. Why can’t we go 325.00?” And his answer, again, “Well, that’s just what my system tells me I can go to.” So, “Okay, Joe, why don’t you put a fender on that, paint that fender, and blend the hood and doors. What is it gonna cost you?” And he’s going to – he doesn’t want to estimate that because it’ll take him –
If you guys have ever been around an adjuster when he goes to his car, I don’t know what they’re doing in there, but it’s taking him forever to put – I can write ten cars before he can get one put in the computer. 99 percent of the time, they’re never quick at this. I don’t know what it is. So, there must be donuts in every one of those cars. Must come out of the air vents or something.
Keith Cosentino: Are they hiring?
Shane Jacks: I think so.
So, he says, “Oh, I don’t know. Probably 5, $600.00.” “Then, Joe, you can either do that, or you can pay me the 325.00 and have a car that hasn’t been painted to the customer. Joe, would you like to talk to the customer? Would you like me to talk to the customer about that to see which they want?” And normally, they’re going to, “Well –” Sometimes, they actually have to call, some of the newer guys.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, that’s what I’ve seen. They’ve gotta call the wizard and get an approval.
Shane Jacks: Yeah. Oftentimes, they’re just too lazy to do that to begin with.
Keith Cosentino: Yes, I’ve seen that too. And I’m talking like I’ve seen a million hailstorms. I haven’t, but I’ve probably done 100 hail cars over the years, so I’ve had the scenario enough different times to have an idea of what you go through.
But I’m gonna bring up something that I hear in your wording, and it may just be the way you’re saying it tonight, but whenever I’m in a negotiation like this, I don’t like to talk about what I’m gonna get. Like, I don’t say, “You don’t want to pay me X” because I don’t like it to be – “It’s you and I in this confrontation. I’m not fighting for what I get, and I’m not fighting with you for what you keep. We’re both negotiating on the behalf of others.”
So, to take that personal element out of it from a negative standpoint, I just don’t ever use the term “pay me” or “what I get” or “the work I want” or “my pocket.” I’ll say stuff like, “Well, the vehicle requires this repair, and this is what this repair costs.” And I kind of leave it neutral like that, and I feel like, at least personally, I feel like it takes a little bit of that personal element of the “me versus you” out of it and takes it a little further away from being a fight than it could be otherwise.
Shane Jacks: Right, and I said “me.” I have at times, and it –
Keith Cosentino: You get a feel for the different guys, and some of them, you can speak –
Shane Jacks: You get feel for, yeah, for the adjuster. It depends on the level of confrontation you feel you’re gonna – and you can feel people. That’s something you can’t explain over a podcast is how you do it, but I rarely use the me-thing, but I am a little more guilty –
Keith Cosentino: And we did talk about it before.
Shane Jacks: I’m a little more guilty of the you-thing than I am the me, but I’ll usually say, instead of “You won’t give me,” like I said a few moments ago, I will say, “You guys,” which kind of turns it on the insurance company instead of just him. I do use that way more than I should, so I do need to adjust what I say.
Keith Cosentino: And I’ve always figured it like they’re just drones going off the system they’re given, so I’m not gonna say, “Well, you won’t give me this.” I’ll say, “Well, your system is set up in such a way that it doesn’t want to allow you to put the proper amount on this car for the proper repair, so what do we need to do to get that system to do the things that you obviously need it to do?” So, it takes it away from like, “Well, you won’t give me my money that I want.”
Shane Jacks: Yeah. Now, I do have one here that works for an insurance company that is at this huge body shop that I do right here, basically a quarter of a mile from my shop. And man, I treat him that way. He has to be treated that way. It is –
Keith Cosentino: You gotta get hard. Well, and like I said a minute ago, I interrupted you, but we did talk about this already, and you can explain on a podcast how to deal with this. You have to deal with the people in the way they deal with you. If they’re gonna speak to you nicely – or forget about nicely. If they’re gonna speak low and slow, you speak low and slow to them. If they’re gonna speak high and jibber-jabbery, you do it back to them, not in a mocking fashion, but just because you’re trying to create an atmosphere that’s comfortable to them and in one that they feel they can communicate well, and that’s how they communicate. So, you gotta be a little bit of a chameleon with these guys.
Next thing you know, you’re jabbing elbows at them, and you guys are buddies, and he’s giving you whatever you need.
Shane Jacks: Yep, and even the gentleman that I’m talking about right here up at this shop right down the road from me, we’re fine with each other. He respects me, I somewhat respect him, but he respects our work here at the shop, immensely. But he will fight for it. He will do it quite a bit, and I will have to. I just jump right back at him. I think he kind of likes it, just to be honest with you.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, I bet he does. You are a worthy adversary.
Shane Jacks: “We shall joust.”
Keith Cosentino: Did you ever see that episode of The Simpsons – I don’t watch it anymore – but when Homer figured out that he could slap people in the face with a glove and they just do whatever he wants?
Shane Jacks: I watched very few episodes.
Keith Cosentino: I don’t remember how he figures it out, but he figures out if he just takes a glove out, a limp glove, and slaps somebody with it, they’ll give him free stuff, or they’ll get out of his way, or whatever they want. So, he’s just going through life with this like magic ticket, just slapping everybody in the face with this glove. And he’s in this convenience store and he slaps this old man with like a big old curly mustache with the glove to get out of the way or something like that – it’s been 20 years since I’ve seen this episode – but the old man says, “I accept your challenge to a duel.” So then he’s all scared. I guess that was actually how you would initiate a duel at some point, and then he had to go out and duel this guy.
Shane Jacks: Off the tangent – One more thing I really wanted to hit on. We’re approaching our hour here being up, again. It’s gone way quicker than we anticipated.
Keith Cosentino: You guys won’t give me enough time.
Shane Jacks: That’s right.
Sizes are huge.
Keith Cosentino: That’s what she said.
Shane Jacks: I knew that was coming. Sizes are huge. There’s gonna have to be a disclaimer at the front of this one.
Keith Cosentino: My jokes are terrible.
Shane Jacks: True.
Keith Cosentino: This is the closest I can get to stand-up comedy.
Shane Jacks: Thank god this is the closest you get to stand-up comedy.
Sizes are important. Man, you’re looking at these things outside and looking at them inside. Put a dime, put a nickel. No. 1, nothing is ever a dime in my world, ever. I should even just take that off the matrix. But put the quarter up there, put the half dollar. You will be amazed how small a half dollar is and how you can – the reflection, the very outer edges of a dent that will be over a half dollar, the size of a half dollar.
And depth is important also. That is another one of those things that you can talk the adjuster into upcharging a little bit, “Dude, these are a little deep. You see how sharp these are?” What are you laughing about?
Keith Cosentino: You can talk them into going deeper.
Shane Jacks: Man, you are terrible tonight!
Keith Cosentino: No, on the dents. Deeper dents. What are you talking about?
Shane Jacks: Oh, man.
Keith Cosentino: If you don’t estimate it properly, then they’re gonna get their depth right.
Shane Jacks: We need to stop. Now.
Are we ready to talk about a tool, or do you have some more stupid jokes to throw out?
Keith Cosentino: You know me long enough to know that I’m never running out of stupid jokes, but we are gonna talk about our tool.
[Crosstalk]Shane Jacks: Tool of the week.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, so I’m excited for you to talk about it because this is something I personally don’t use. This is a Shane Jacks original, and if this was a cool radio show, we’d have like a jingle that says, “[Noise] Shane Jacks original.”
Shane Jacks: Putting in the man-hours.
Keith Cosentino: Prestige.
Shane Jacks: Worldwide, worldwide.
Keith Cosentino: Check, check.
Shane Jacks: The Tolecut, T-O-L-E-C-U-T, and this is something you can get – I get mine off of Amazon, and it is a sandpaper, a dry-cut sandpaper.
Keith Cosentino: Dry, so it’s like wet-sanding that we all do, but it’s no water.
Shane Jacks: No water. And I know the first thing that’s coming into everyone’s mind right now is, “Well, your plane paper’s gonna clog up, boy.”
That’s the thing about this stuff. It has some sort of anti-clog technology that they got from Martians, and the stuff doesn’t clog. You can sand with it. You sand, and after five seconds of sanding, you pull it off, run your thumb over it – or whatever finger you – or just rub it on your jeans – and the sand dust comes off, and you just keep cutting, and the stuff is absolutely amazing. It doesn’t clog.
And it comes in, I believe it comes in three different cuts. I only use two of the cuts, the pink and the black, which is the pink is 2,000 grit. The black is 3,000 grit. These things, it comes with a small rubber block. They’re adhesive on the back. They’re precut adhesive sheets.
Keith Cosentino: Oh, so they’re little stickers that go on there.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, little stickers that go on the back of the block.
Keith Cosentino: Oh, that’s nice.
Shane Jacks: And they’re, what, 1” by 1” or 1” by ¾”.
Keith Cosentino: I’m looking at the site right now. There’s some round, and then there’s the rectangles.
Shane Jacks: Okay, I haven’t seen the round. I just use the rectangle, so I haven’t seen the round yet. That’s a new one on me.
Keith Cosentino: They’re an inch and 3/8 in diameter. I wonder if those fit those little 3M blocks.
Shane Jacks: Probably fit the little 3M blocks, the little red 3M blocks. You’re right, I bet they do. But these things – and after you hit it with that 3,000, the black – I’ll hit it with the pink and then the black – it will hand rub out really, really easily, unless you’ve got something with stupid hard clear, like a VW or an Audi or some Chrysler products. Anyway, if it’s got normal clear on, you can pretty much hand rub these things with some good compound from 3M or something like that.
But man, this stuff – You’re gonna ask why. Well, they’re precut, that’s one reason. No. 2, the biggest reason is no more what I call sanding juice running down the car. That stuff drives me freaking insane because what I always do is, because I’m a lazy moron, is I take my hand and I’ll run over that sanding juice, and then it goes directly onto my pants. Every single time. I don’t sand that much, but if I sand on one or two cars a day, and it’s at the beginning of the day, you know what? I walk around with this white haze on one of my pant legs for the rest of the day, and it looks stupid.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, mine’s on the inside of my forearm because I’m worried my hands have some kind of piece of dirt that I don’t feel on them because they’re kinda rough, so I use the inside of my forearm and I always have this white smudge there.
Shane Jacks: And it looks so stupid. It attracts dirt.
Keith Cosentino: I guess if we’re talking about sandpaper, we may as well have this as a mini topic because I know a lot of guys think this is cheating, or it’s to hide crappy work, or they think a lot of weird things about it. But I know that your comfort in sanding comes from your experience in the factory.
Shane Jacks: Correct.
Keith Cosentino: Tell us a little bit about why working in the factory makes you more confident sanding a car.
Shane Jacks: Mainly because I know they do it at every single factory in the world.
Keith Cosentino: What the what? They’re sanding cars at a factory?
Shane Jacks: Of course they are.
Keith Cosentino: With Tolecut?
Shane Jacks: With 3M products, normally, but that’s just a corporate –
Keith Cosentino: They got the account.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, a corporate deal. If the technicians there had their way, it would be with the Tolecut so they wouldn’t have sanding juice everywhere. That stuff’s evil.
Keith Cosentino: And so, I got to experience Shane’s world firsthand going back and working in that factory with him, and these guys are cutting the crap out of brand-new cars. They’re cutting them flat as glass trying to get stuff out that probably shouldn’t come out. And if it comes out and it didn’t burn, that is shipping as a brand-new BMW.
Shane Jacks: It goes out the door.
Keith Cosentino: Right out the door, so – I was already fine with sanding, but that was just a reinforcement to me that if BMW’s gonna put their stamp on it as a brand-new car, and it’s good to go – And believe me, nothing’s coming out of that place that hasn’t been inspected ten times over and been through their system. They’re not putting anything anomalous out. They know what they’re shipping. And if they’re happy for that to roll out the door, then I’ve gotta be happy to send that car back to the customer’s house that I’m working on.
Shane Jacks: Right. Techs are hesitant to do it, to sand, to cut and buff, whatever you want to call it. They think it’s un-pure, they think that you’re gonna break through every time you do it, that you’re compromising the integrity of the vehicle, the integrity of the clear coat, the UV protection in the clear coat, and I say, “Well, you need to go preach to the presidents of these large manufacturers because they’re not listening. They don’t believe that.” You know why they don’t?
Keith Cosentino: And they gotta put their money –
Shane Jacks: It’s accepted because there’s no problem with it, and No. 2, it makes money. And that’s why I’m cool with it, because it makes me money.
Keith, you and I both can glass – okay, if it’s a half-dollar size dent that has some depth to it – you can either spend, and I’m just giving an example here because all of my dents take me less than 30 seconds, no matter what size they are. If you can take a half-dollar size dent and you can glass that sucker in 45 minutes, or you can get it flat with a couple of tiny bumps that are really gonna be sanded out with ten strokes back and forth of the sandpaper in 30 minutes and buff it in a minute and a half, which am I gonna choose?
You can talk about integrity, you can talk about blah, blah, blah all you want, I’m going with the 31 ½ minutes every single time because I am not in this for anything other than making money.
Keith Cosentino: Yep, I agree 100 percent. And oftentimes, I enjoy removing a nice little scuff that’s part of my dent. I did a hail car just yesterday, and there was a big scratch. It had nothing to do with my repair, but there was a big scratch over the deck lid, like something was slid down off the glass and put a big scratch in the top of the deck lid. And I sanded it out and polished it because I’m delivering that panel and whether or not that scratch had anything to do with me – I know it didn’t, but they don’t know that, and even if they did know the scratch was there, it was nice to ship it back to them without the scratch in it. And I was able to do it because I know how much I can sand without burning a car up.
Shane Jacks: Right, it’s that little something extra that you talked about in an earlier episode.
Keith Cosentino: That’s right. And customers dig on it, and it’s actually a profit center if you treat it right, in the retail world. A lot of people wanna get a little scratch out, and they don’t know how or what it does, and man, you can sand and polish a scratch in five minutes. In fact, if there’s any detail guys listening that are not PDR guys yet and you’re thinking about getting into it, do yourself a favor. If you don’t know how to color sand, learn it, and if you do know how to, separate that service from your detailing and treat it as a scratch-repair service, and triple the price of a detail for a 15-, 20-minute scratch removal.
That is a repair. That’s never coming back. A detail is just a cleaning that’s gonna be dirty again no matter what happens.
Shane Jacks: And again, this is all about – we preach, you and I, Keith, we preach about salesmanship and giving the customer what they want. And it is rare when a customer comes in with a dent that it doesn’t have some sort of scratch or scuff in the middle of it, and when they come in, a lot of the times they think – these are the words that come out, “I know you can’t do nothing with that scratch, but I’m just wanting the dent fixed.”
And it’s so nice to be able to tell – And you don’t just say – now, I used to, but I’ve upped my game quite a bit in the last few years – you don’t just say, “Oh, I’ll take care of that.” Hey, sell it. Even if you’re not charging any more at this very point for that repair, you tell that customer – here’s kinda the way I do it, and you may do the same way, Keith. If you do it differently, you can share also.
But here’s what I’ll tell them. “Well, I want the dent fixed. I know there ain’t nothing you can do with the scratch.” I’ll tell them, “Actually, yes, ma’am, there is something that I can do.”
Keith Cosentino: Why is everyone of your customers a redneck? Whenever you do the voice of your customers, it’s never like, “Hello, Shane, I’m looking to have a dent repaired.”
Shane Jacks: Perhaps you don’t remember what you and Bob said to me in the plant that time about my accent. Remember what you said?
Keith Cosentino: What did I say?
Shane Jacks: You said, “Bob and I have been speaking, and upon further review, you don’t really have an accent” because of everybody else around here has a worse accent than me. You don’t remember that?
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, I do.
Shane Jacks: Okay, then, so stop. They are all worse than me. Every one of them.
Keith Cosentino: I’m sorry. Tell me the rest of your story.
Shane Jacks: So anyway, I don’t even remember. So anyway, I don’t just say, “Yes, ma’am, that’ll be gone when it’s done.” “Yes, ma’am, actually, ma’am, we can repair that and we will repair that. We have a method” – or a system, however you wanna say it – “We have a method of removing those scratches. We will lightly buff” – I will very rarely say “sand” unless they ask about it but – “We have a compound and a method that we use that will buff that out, and you will never know it was there.” Sell it. Even if you’re not getting any more money, selling it to them they can sell it to their friends.
Keith Cosentino: Right. Yeah, so I’ll do a couple of different things depending on the severity of the PDR repair, and how much time I’m gonna be spending on it, and how much money I’m gonna be making on that repair. If it’s a good-sized job and they’re concerned with the scratch, I’ll say, “You know what? I think we might be able to do something for that scratch,” and that will be my little something extra that I do.
If it’s a tiny repair that’s gonna be fast PDR-wise, then I’ll try to bill them something for the scratch repair and say, “Now, what are you more concerned with, the dent here or the scratch?” “Well, both.” “Okay. So, to fix the dent, we’re gonna use this method. That’s this much. To fix the scratch, we’re gonna use a different method. That’s this much.” “Okay, sounds great.”
So, I’m actually kinda doing two services, and that’s the exception. I don’t do a lot of paid scratch removal, but I want to squeeze as much money out of that job as possible within reason. But sometimes, I like to use that little opportunity for my something extra instead. But either way is fine.
Shane Jacks: Most of the time, my something extra is just them being able to converse with me.
Keith Cosentino: “You wanna hold my trophy?”
Shane Jacks: “It’s here in the shop, in the office.”
Keith Cosentino: All right, man, that hour goes by so fast.
Shane Jacks: Extremely.
Keith Cosentino: It’s amazing. But we love making these shows for you guys, and we’re happy that you keep enjoying them. Coming up soon, not this show unfortunately, but coming up next show or show after, we’re gonna have a pretty cool giveaway, so keep listening for your chance to win.
So, Shane, remind us. What are the main key points we wanna remember when we’re estimating a hail car?
Shane Jacks: Get as much money as you can. I’m just kidding. The main things we want to remember is your upcharges, your size. Be mindful of your upcharges, be mindful of the sizes of the dents that you are estimating, and work with the adjuster, not against him or her.
Keith Cosentino: All right. And Tolecut on Amazon.com, T-O-L-E-C-U-T.
Shane Jacks: Correct.
Keith Cosentino: You know what? We didn’t talk about how much it costs.
Shane Jacks: Oh, it’s like 25 sheets for 30 some-odd dollars, and each sheet has eight square sheets on it. So, you’ll get the pink and the black. You’ll get 200 sheets of each, 200 squares of each in each box for 65.00, 70.00 bucks. It’ll last you a long time. And it’s well worth it. It’s a little more expensive than normal sandpaper, but man, it is well worth it. It’ll last you a good while.
Keith Cosentino: Cool. All right. That puts this episode in the books. We will catch you guys next time on the PDR College Podcast.
Shane Jacks: Get better.
[End of Audio]Duration: 65 minutes
