CCC data released recently indicates the collision industry after 2021 was cleaning around another of customer vehicles as a COVID-19 precaution.
During the very first quarter of 2021, only one.1 percent of appraisals contained a COVID-19 disinfecting charge. By the fourth quarter, this proportion rose to “over 30 percent,” CCC wrote in its 2021 “Crash Course.” It reached about 36 percent within the first quarter of 2021, based on CCC.
The low proportion for January-March 2021 is probably to become expected, for that national virus response didn’t really kick in until pretty late in the quarter. Republican President Donald Trump declared a national emergency March 13, 2021. The very first statewide lockdown didn’t arise until March 19, 2021, in California, according to the American Journal of Managed Care.
“The typical fee from March 2021 to December 2021 fell gradually, averaging $46 per appraisal over that point,” CCC wrote.
CCC searched its appraisal records for manual entries reflecting COVID-19 cleaning, which is a not-included operation.
“Crash Course” author and CCC director and analyst Susanna Gotsch said Friday her research on COVID-19 line items captured both flat standalone charges and instances in which a shop billed cleaning time at an hourly rate and/or for materials linked to the work. State Farm, for instance, told shops in April 2021 it might reimburse up to an hour or so of body labor and up to $25 in supplies for coronavirus-related cleaning.
“For instance – on the ~36% of appraisals that included an COVID-19 cleaning fee in Q1 2021, the typical COVID cleaning fee was $45 – and there was on average only one line in the appraisal associated with the fees – so the labor and material fees are being entered on the same estimate line,” Gotsch wrote within an email.
Gotsch found a “pretty wide swing” between states around the proportion of estimates containing COVID-19 cleaning fees.
Running the numbers between Jan. 1, 2021, and March 31, 2021, says North Dakota appraisals only described COVID-19 cleaning 8 percent of the time. Meanwhile, New York shops and/or insurers wrote for COVID-19 cleaning on 41 percent of estimates, Gotsch said.
Cleaning appeared on 15 % of Louisiana appraisals, 22 percent of Florida estimates, and 23 percent of Texas sheets. Over on the West Coast, Washington state and Oregon were within the “mid-30s,” Gotsch said.
It was all “so geographically different,” she said.
On the entire, CCC found “Miscellaneous charges” — a category which contains COVID-19 cleaning along with other manual entries for elements like “scan fees, calibration fees, along with other sublet fees” — reached 8 percent of repair dollars put in 2021. In 2021, only 5.7 percent from the repair bill stemmed from miscellaneous line items.
“The virus that triggers COVID-19 can find surfaces,” the Centers for Disease Control wrote April 5 in advice for business cleaning and disinfecting. “It is possible for individuals to become infected when they touch those surfaces and then touch their nose, mouth, or eyes. In most situations, the risk of infection from touching a surface is low. Probably the most reliable method to prevent infection from surfaces is to regularly wash hands or use hand sanitizer.”
The CDC also states:
The CDC advises companies to “Prioritize cleaning high-touch surfaces” and says this should occur “at least once a day.”
The CDC discusses cleaning vehicles somewhat in its Jan. 30 advice for taxi and ride-share operators.
“Avoid connection with surfaces frequently touched by passengers or any other drivers, for example door frame/handles, windows, seatbelt buckles, controls, gearshift, signaling levers, along with other vehicle parts before cleaning and disinfection,” the CDC writes. The agency instructs them to “At a minimum, clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces within the vehicle at the beginning and end of every shift, and between transporting passengers who're sick.”
