By Jim Boyle, Chapter President and Owner of Regal Collision

Hello and Happy New Year!! Hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season.

The new year is upon us like a speeding freight train. We have already had our first general membership meeting and what a meeting it was. Talk about an eye opener--both subjects were great. The universal underwriter's front office fraud presentation just amazed me. The dishonesty and the way it hits smaller businesses in larger numbers is alarming. I really hope everyone learned something from this presentation. I know I did. A big "thank you" goes out to the Redwood Chapter members who came up and spoke about the legislation being pushed that will severely hurt our industry. I hope everyone was able to get copies of the information they were handing out. This legislation is bad for business...Please send the letters, make the phone calls, get involved, and come with us to legislation day on March 29th! There is power in numbers...Mark you calendars... Help show the insurance companies that we are not going down without a fight.

These legislators are voted in to office by us to serve us, not to let special interests put us out of business. If you think I'm not a body shop so why do I care if the insurance company makes it mandatory to use only 1 kind of paint. You could lose customers who are forced to switch to stay in business. If the aftermarket bill passes making them equal to OEM, insurance companies will use the cheapest part so OEM parts would be a rarity on a collision repair. That would be a huge loss of business for OEM businesses some who are already struggling.

We want to support all our vendors, but we need your support also. This is why we encourage vendor participation in our chapter; we all need to work together

See you at the March General Membership Meeting on Tuesday, March 21. Location and time to be determined.