The California Insurance Department (“CID”) has issued new “Anti-Steering in Auto Body Repair” regulations that, it said, will “increase consumer protections to prevent consumers from being misled or claims delayed when a collision-damaged vehicle needs to be repaired.”
The new rules prohibit insurers from making untruthful, deceptive, or misleading statements to consumers that unreasonably influence a consumer's right to select the repair facility.
According to the CID, these new regulations complement existing state consumer protection laws that prohibit insurance companies from requiring that repairs be done in an insurance company-chosen shop and “guarantee that consumers have the absolute right to select where they have their vehicles repaired.”
The new rules also provide guidelines for reasonable timeframes for insurers to inspect damaged vehicles and identify what constitutes unreasonable distances in cases where an insurer requires the consumer to travel to obtain a repair estimate or have a vehicle repaired.
“Consumers who suffer from collision damage should not be misled by insurance companies or forced to wait weeks for an inspection in order to steer them away from their chosen shop and into insurer-contracted repair shops just so the insurance company can save money at the expense of proper and safe repairs,” said CID Commissioner Dave Jones.
These new regulations follow the recently approved Auto Collision Repair Labor Rate Survey regulations, which set forth standards for insurers intended to ensure that auto body repair labor rate surveys are accurate and reliable so that insurers pay the reasonable and proper amount and consumers are not paying out-of-pocket for collision repairs.
The compliance date for the Anti-Steering in Auto Body Repair regulations is March 12, 2017.
Steven A. Meyerowitz
Steven A. Meyerowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., a law firm marketing communications consulting company. He may be contacted at [email protected].