How a hail claim actually works.
1. Hail dents the car. A hailstorm can leave dozens or hundreds of small dents on the roof, hood, trunk, and top of the fenders. The paint is usually fine. The metal is pushed in.
2. The customer's insurance pays for it. Hail is covered under comprehensive coverage, which about 80% of insured drivers carry (Insurance Information Institute). Nobody is at fault in a hailstorm, so it is a comprehensive claim, not an accident claim. The customer pays their deductible, the insurance company pays the rest.
3. Someone writes an estimate. An estimate is an itemized price list for the repair: how many dents on each panel, how big, and what has to come off to reach them. The insurance company sends its inspector, called an adjuster, to write theirs. A repair shop writes its own. The two often disagree.
4. The insurer's first number is often short. First estimates are written fast and often miss dents, especially small ones and ones under trim. A supplement is the corrected estimate, with photos, that gets the missed damage paid. On hail, supplements are normal.
5. The car gets repaired with PDR. Paintless dent repair. A technician works each dent out from behind the panel with specialized tools. No filler, no repaint. The factory paint stays, so the car keeps its value. Most hail repairs take one to three days.
6. The insurance company pays for the repair. The check usually goes to the shop, sometimes to the owner or a lender who then signs it over. Either way it pays whoever fixed the car. Today, that is rarely a dealership. With the Dealership Hail Program, it is your store.
In our experience, most hail-damaged cars are never repaired. By our count, only about 3 in 10 ever are. Owners do not know how easy the claim is, and they do not know who to trust with the car. That is the opportunity. Every unrepaired car in your customer base is a claim waiting for a trusted name.
The words you will hear, and what they mean.
- PDR (paintless dent repair)
- Working a dent out from behind the panel with special tools, so the factory paint stays untouched. The standard repair for hail. No filler, no repaint, no body work on the vehicle's history.
- Comprehensive coverage
- The part of an auto policy that covers damage not caused by a collision: hail, theft, fire, a tree branch. Hail claims are comprehensive claims.
- Deductible
- The customer's share of the repair, set by their policy. Commonly $250 to $1,000. Any shop that offers to "waive" it by padding the insurer's bill is committing insurance fraud.
- Estimate
- The itemized price list for the repair: dents per panel, size, and the steps needed to reach them. The insurer writes one. So does the repair shop.
- Adjuster
- The insurance company's inspector. They look at the car and write the insurer's estimate. Our claims team works with them so your staff never has to.
- Supplement
- A corrected estimate sent after the first one, with photos, for damage the adjuster missed or steps the repair actually required. Normal on hail. Only legitimate when the work was performed.
- R&I (remove and install)
- Taking off a headliner, a light, or trim to reach a dent from behind, then putting it back. Insurers generally require photo proof, so we photograph every one.
- Hail matrix
- The insurance industry's price chart for hail: so many dents of a given size on a given panel equals a set price. Every estimate is priced from it. A dent bigger than the chart covers, usually over an inch, is an oversize dent and is priced separately.
- Total loss
- When the repair cost is more than a set share of the car's value, the insurer buys the car instead of repairing it. We screen for this before a car is scheduled.
- Claims administration
- Filing the claim, scheduling the adjuster, sending the paperwork, tracking approval, and working the file to the final check. Our claims team does all of it, in your name.
- Storm chaser
- A crew that follows hailstorms from town to town, sets up in a parking lot or knocks on doors, repairs cars for a season, and leaves. The industry's dominant business model, and the reason nobody trusts it.
- Open-lot policy
- The insurance a dealership carries on its own inventory. When hail hits the lot, the claim is filed on this policy, one claim for every damaged unit.
- Repair statement
- The one-page document your store gets for every settled repair: what the insurer paid, what the repair cost, who fronted what, and the store's share.
The customer already trusts you. Nobody trusts the tent.
The dealership already has the customer's trust, their address, their service history, and a lot to repair the car on. The only thing it lacked was a system: a claims team, certified technicians, customer care, and paperwork that runs without hiring a hail expert. That is what the Dealership Hail Program installs.
The size of the opportunity, and why the industry never built this itself, is on the Why DHR page.