Four employers of car workshops (Cetraa, Conepa, Fagenauto and Ganvan, except Faconauto) have decided to stand up to the abuses of car insurers. These associations, which represent 90% of the sector, denounce that the large insurers set the price/hour of labor for repairs. For example, painting a car can cost 1,800 euros and insurance companies require workshops to do it for around 1,400 euros.
Another point that they have put on the table is that insurers draw up scales, with which repairs are assessed. Especially the estimated time that it can take to carry out a repair.
In addition, the small workshops denounce that there is excessive economic dependence on the experts, which does not guarantee that they act with strict objectivity when evaluating the damage, both in their qualification, and in the hours to be used in the repair, as well as in fixing the price/hour of labor.
In addition, the four employers criticize that there is "possible tacit collusion between insurers", that is, that they act carrying out similar practices all of them in terms of prices, which alters the Spanish market for repairs and negatively affects the balance of the components.
Another practice that car repair shops denounce is that some policies oblige their clients to take their vehicle to be repaired at a certain workshop, called linked under the argument that they provide a replacement car for free or other similar services, which in the practice amounts to saying that they direct their turnover to certain workshops.
For all these reasons, the four employers' organizations have denounced in Europe that Spain be forced to comply with European regulations, since the Spanish one is more lax.
As for figures of operational workshops in Spain, there are about 42,000. Faconauto, which has some 5,000 brand workshops, has not joined the initiative because it considers that it is better to negotiate the anomalies with each insurer and because as a lobby it is better to try to solve the problem in Spain, since the processes that are carried out to the European Union extend a long time. To do this, it has created a monitoring commission that is trying to detect existing problems.
For now, the petitions committee of the European Parliament, chaired by the Catalan Dolors Montserrat, has asked the European Commission to investigate the possible breach of community regulations in Spain on bad practices by insurers in their relationship with repair shops . In addition, the complaint has been transferred to the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection of the European Parliament.
