I feel compelled to respond to Rick Turri's guest editorial in the September issue of AutoInc. pertaining to blend refinishing. I believe it is obvious to all of us in the body and paint repair business that Mr. Turri has fallen out of touch with the realities that exist in the body and paint repair industry.

In his own editorial he stated that he has heard opposition on blend refinishing from industry professionals, inter-industry meetings, shop association meetings, in the media, in letters and e-mail ... He says “he understands how these people feel.” Has he followed up on this mass of opposite opinion with specific, credible paint-related data? Has he personally spoken with painters in the field in an effort to compile data pertaining to blend refinishing? How could all of these people be wrong?

Has Mr. Turri ever blended an adjacent panel? Or has he simply continued to fog this issue with textbook quotations? I think the answer is obvious. When and where have all of these field studies been done? I have been in this industry for more than 30 years and I have yet to hear of one of them. Nor have I ever talked to anyone else that has seen or heard of one. We would all love to see the actual documentation of “the thousands of hours of study data.” And isn't it amazing that all of the information providers have come up with the very same 50 percent formula?

Where did this absurd 50 percent idea come from? Years ago, when I started out in this industry, all I would hear from the adjuster was the standard answer: “If the panel isn't damaged, we won't pay to paint it.” Trying to do a quality job, we would blend the panels and absorb the cost. After years of complaining, education, negotiation and work, I think everyone finally agreed that blending for color match was a legitimate and very necessary operation. Was the 50 percent number used as a pacifier? I think so. It was used long before the “hundreds of field studies” were done. And yes, we not only lose on the labor, we also lose on the paint and material end. It takes just as much paint and material to do the blend as it does to paint the panel complete. After all, it takes the same amount of clear and catalyst, the expensive part. That's really pretty simple to figure out.

If you look at the ADP Database Reference manual, you will see that all of the major operations that are necessary to refinish a panel are also necessary to blend a panel. Add to that the additional time needed to actually blend the paint out to facilitate a color match and I don't see how we can be expected to do it for half of the refinish time. What has happened to common sense? I believe any painter would agree it's much faster to just paint the panel. And that is the real fact.

How and when are we going to get fair compensation for the time it actually takes to blend for color match?

Our guest editorialist this month, ASA member Tom Mills, addresses the issue of paint blends in response to Rick Tuuri's column published in the September issue of AutoInc. Click here to read Tuuri's column.

Tom Mills, owner of Jefferson Auto Collision Repair in Mishawaka, Ind., is 62 years old and has been involved in the automobile repair business since he was 18. He built and opened Jefferson Auto Collision Repair in 1972, which he still owns and operates with his son and a manager that has been with the company since 1973. Jefferson Auto Collision Repair is an I-CAR Gold Class facility and a longtime member of ASA.

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