What is an Estimate?

An auto estimate is an approximation of the repair costs based upon the visible damages, current part prices, and the estimator’s opinion regarding the time it will take to perform certain repair operations.

Due to more and more of the cars components being shrouded in plastic and assembled more compactly, The full extent of the damages cannot be seen without disassembly, which would often render the vehicle un-drivable. For this reason, it is important to realize that the estimate may not include all that is necessary to complete the repair properly.

In order to ensure that billing be as accurate as possible, our file handlers, as well as insurance damage appraisers, estimate only what they can clearly see needs to be done, rather than guessing or including some “contingency costs”. Any suspect items are left as “open” items on the initial estimate, and will be repaired and paid for later on the supplement.

If you find yourself in a situation where someone hit you and wants to make a payment off of an estimate, talk to one of our file handlers and we will explain how to best approach this situation.