Dents Big and Small
PDR companies like Dent Wizard can work on an on-call or exclusive basis. In some areas, technicians establish a daily route, visiting several clients and taking care of that day’s jobs. “We repair anything from a dime-sized ding to a caved-in bumper or panel, and it can take minutes or hours,” Menchaca says. What Dent Wizard considers a typical ding takes about 10 minutes to remove and is about the size of a quarter.
Menchaca says that if PDR technicians cannot complete a repair, they can still save a car rental company time and money. “There are all different ways to reduce cost and time,” she says. “For instance, in cases where you would use a body shop, Dent Wizard can do some of the work to reduce the body and paint time and cost.”
Avis Budget uses PDR to reduce collision repair cost on vehicles that need actual body repair. “Before a vehicle goes to a body shop, we have a technician use PDR on the panels that can be fixed with PDR, and we have the body shop work on the panels that cannot be fixed with PDR,” says Bernacki. “We use PDR whenever it can be applied.”
PDR can bring real savings at the time of sale: One estimate is that for every $1 spent on PDR, $1.50 to $2 can be returned at auction. “There’s a significant return on investment,” Menchaca says.
Evolving to Meet New Needs
One of the best reasons to use PDR is that the companies know what’s best for the car rental company as well as the auto manufacturer. “We are so engaged with the turnback process that we have trained our technicians to be a second pair of eyes,” says Menchaca. “They assist car rental managers in making good remarketing repair decisions.” The result is that at turnback, the car rental company pays a reasonable price for repairs, and the manufacturer receives a high-quality car back from the car rental company.
PDR is evolving, Lipinski says, and that is also good for car rental companies. In the past, he would call one vendor for the interior, a second for PDR, and a third to fix a bumper. But now, he says, “in a lot of the Dent Wizard markets, they’re capable of doing more than PDR. It’s one-stop shopping.”
Dent Wizard technicians take their work seriously, Menchaca adds. “What we do helps — and what we don’t receive the opportunity to do hurts — the bottom line. We like to say that we work for the car rental company, even though we wear the Dent Wizard shirt.”
Annie Lubinsky is a contributing writer for Auto Rental News.
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