The guys in the shop and the detailers all did an amazing job. It looks like I have a brand new car. I could not ask for better in that regard.
My single biggest problem was the lack of regular communication from the estimator. I, as a customer, had an expectation to receive a reasonable amount of communication regarding the status of my vehicle's repairs, but this level of service was not met.
When I dropped my car off I was asked to sign a piece of paper asking me how I would prefer to be contacted, and it stated that D&V would reach out to me at least twice per week to let me know how things were going, and that they would reach out 'more' than twice per week in cases of questions or problems.
This, categorically, did not happen. Many times I was left in the dark regarding the state of my car and the estimated time remaining until it would be returned to me.
The first sign of trouble was when I was asked to return the day after I dropped my car off so they could correct their documentation as they had failed to document all necessary repairs during the original estimate months before.
At several junctures, after more than a week had passed, I would call D&V and ask for an update, but no one was ever available, so I would have to wait another few hours, sometimes another day, to receive an email with a brief message.
The messages I would receive would often have no new information when compared to the last message, or would have confusing information.
For example, it was necessary to order parts two separate times for my vehicle. Eventually, I was told that the second set of parts had finally arrived and repairs would resume soon.
About a week later I received another message restating that the second set of parts had come in and repairs would begin soon.
Why did it take a week for repairs to resume after the parts had come in? I don't know, and because there was no transparency in the communication. It felt unprofessional, and like I was not a priority for D&V.
At another interval I was told that additional damage had been found on the car after disassembly and that the revised estimate would need to be approved by my insurance provider, which I understood.
However, the estimator chose to communicate the newly-found damage simply by sending me a PDF with a bunch of technical jargon and abbreviations on it.
That's not good customer service.
They should have taken a few extra moments to say "Hey, Mr. Customer, we found additional damage when we took apart the door, so we need sign-off from the insurance provider to order the additional parts". That's not what happened.
Instead, I had to Google search what the abbreviations on the document meant and, bonus, because I did not have a PDF copy of the original estimate document, I had nothing to compare the revised estimate with, so it was difficult to determine what was 'newly discovered' damage versus what was 'known' damage. In short, the document had very low value to me and communicated very little useful or clear information.
Another failure in customer service was that I did not clearly understand that my point of contact's title was that of "estimator" until I had paid my deductible, picked up my repaired vehicle, and received a printed message with that person's title in their signature line.
The estimator's job title does not appear in their signature line in the emails they sent me, so I always thought I was speaking directly to a representative of D&V, someone who was a direct source of information.
However, half way through the process I discovered this is not the case, and that D&V's communication between their internal teams is sometimes delayed or lacking. The estimator often asked me to hold on while he checked with another team in order to get the current status of the car for me.
You can see how every aspect of the communication process was very reactive.
For a vehicle repair service, which is likely one of the largest bills many folks will receive during the year, you would expect a better...
Read more
Learn more insights from Wanderboat AI.
