Everyone’s talking about the shortage of goods. You can go to the grocery store or your local pharmacy and see a good portion of the shelves are empty. People who have hoarded certain items are selling at scalping prices.
For the first time in auto manufacturing history, cars are appreciating rather than depreciating. Insurance companies must pay much more for a totaled vehicle today than they did just a year ago. Even though you see dealer lots packed with cars, there is a shortage of automobiles. Parts for new cars are hard to find, and news stories report that shipping ports are jammed with products from other countries without workers to process them. It appears to be a tumultuous time for buying and selling certain commodities.
Many of our customers have experienced four-month wait times to settle a claim. A year ago, the same claim would have resolved in a week, even during the worst time of the lock-down. Why? Because of lack of parts to fix the car and people to process the claim. Body shops have cars stacked up, waiting for the parts to be delivered.
What can you do? Not much, but wait. You could search junkyards for parts on crashed vehicles like yours, but wait times for shipping and prices might be as much as waiting for the new piece to arrive. Which cars are better for parts availability? It’s impossible to say. A neighbor drives a foreign-made vehicle. She waited three months to have a used computer board shipped and installed, at twice the price of new, because the manufacturer couldn’t get the chip from another country. A customer with a similar problem drives a domestic vehicle and got the part in three days.
Whether it’s a mechanical failure or a car crash, expect delays in getting the parts to fix your car if it’s not declared a total loss.