Sacramento, Calif.—The California Autobody Association (CAA) is quarreling with the insurance industry over insurers’ insistance that what the CAA calls a “blend within panel” is actually a partial refinish.
First, a little background:
David McClune, executive director of the California Autobody Association (CAA), said that when a body panel is partially damaged but still repairable, it is common practice to refinish it by using a process called “blend within panel.”
All cars today are painted with a basecoat/clearcoat method, McClune said. The purpose of “blend within panel” is to keep the basecoat (i.e., color coat) away from adjacent panels to avoid either unacceptable color match or blending color into those adjacent panels at additional cost, he said.
For example, take the case of a dent in the front of a door, McClune said. After the door panel is repaired, feather-edged, primed, blocked, and reprimed, it may be possible to use the “blend within panel” technique if the primed area is still at least 18-inches from the back of the door, he said.
That technique entails color-coating the primed area, blending the color into the remaining undamaged portion of the door, and then clear-coating the entire door, McClune added.
The CAA said some insurers see this process instead as a partial refinish rather than a blend, which they believe allows them to take a deduction from the estimating software’s allowed basecoat refinish labor.
That adjustment is commonly referred to as a “basecoat reduction.” The CAA said that is often explained by adjusters simply by saying, “You’re only painting half the door, and we’re only going to pay half the labor.”
The CAA said the problem with that logic is that the basecoat refinish labor time includes many operations other than the basecoat application itself. CCC Information Services has provided the following breakdown regarding data compiled by Motor magazine:
1. Panel Prep/Clean/Wash: 27 percent
2. Primer/Sealer: 7 percent
3. Color Coat Application: 19 percent
4. Sanding Operations Combined: 47 percent
5. Clear Coat:
a. First major panel - Add 40 percent to refinish time
b. Each additional panel - Add 20 percent to refinish time
c. Maximum time allocation - 2.5 hours"
As evidenced by item No. 3 above, basecoat application is only 19 percent of the total basecoat refinish labor allowed. All other operations listed must be performed whether or not the panel is partially or fully basecoated, as the entire panel will be subject to full clear coat, the CAA said.
Using the example door panel, the database allows 2.5 hours for the entire basecoat refinish operation (items 1-4 above), the CAA said. When performing a “blend within panel” (or partial refinish) on the door, the only operation that may be subject to reduction is No. 3, the time allotted for applying the basecoat, it said.
The simple calculation is this: 19 percent of 2.5 hours is 0.48 hours, so the actual basecoat application time for the example door is less than 0.5 hours, the CAA said.
Some insurers regularly reduce the estimating software’s basecoat time by at least 0.5 hours, and McClune said he has seen that reduction as high as 1.5 hours. “Any reduction that is greater than the actual time allowed is not only unreasonable, it is baseless,” he said.
The refinish time study does not make any mention of blending. Blending is a special technique used to apply basecoat so that it blends new color into old color and may include additional steps such as viscosity adjustment, the application of blending promoters, and “finessing” the new paint into the old so the change is undetectable, McClune said. Since those are not included operations when refinishing an entire panel, additional labor may be required, he said.
In the example where only half the door is being basecoated, the greatest reduction that should ever be considered is 0.2 hours, McClune said. Adding back additional labor to compensate for the “blend within panel” operation may make the required labor actually higher than the original basecoat time, he said.
Also, it is important that written estimates allow customers to recognize this procedure and that they are compliant with Bureau of Automotive Repair (BAR) regulations, McClune said.
Other than those estimate line items designated as blend, each refinish line in an estimate that may represent a partial basecoat must be noted as such, McClune said. The BAR has suggested to the CAA that the line explanation be written as “partial basecoat with full clearcoat,” or “blend within panel,” he said.
The CAA said it is recommending that shops contact their estimating software provider to learn the easiest way to accomplish this and will be requesting estimating software providers to make this an automatic notation for repaired panels in future releases of their software.
“The CAA has received a great deal of feedback from its members and found that they have begun to put this into perspective. We are also going to try and provide our members with technical information that will help them,” McClune said.
