AUDATEX IN THE SIN BIN
The South African Competition Commission has recently accused Audatex of discriminating against historically disadvantaged repairers and assessors. They are seeking to have Audatex docked 10% of its annual revenue by the Competition Tribunal.
The commission found that Audatex’s conduct affected small and medium enterprises and firms owned by historically disadvantaged persons operating as assessors and repairers in the motor vehicle industry. They added that the alleged price-discriminatory conduct occurred between 2020 and 2024 and has good cause to believe that the practice is ongoing.
It is claimed that Audatex operates a differential pricing structure for its repair estimation software. Customers that generate high volumes of assessment quotes benefit from lower per-quote fees under this structure, while smaller firms pay higher fees for the same services. The price differentials are more than the commission’s safe harbour threshold of 10%. There is evidence showing that customers from smaller firms have paid 50% or more than the average price charged to larger customers.
Audatex have been operating locally for more than four decades in vehicle claims, vehicle repairs, vehicle solutions and fleet solutions. They claim to process 81% of all insurance claims locally and have an extensive database covering more than 17 million records, with 1 349 models and 2 083 OEM official guidelines and procedures for fixing a vehicle.
Having this data makes sure that Audatex is a leader in automated repair estimation repair. The commission believes that it’s this dominance that has allowed Audatex to implement this discriminatory pricing for smaller businesses.
Chinese five-spice and more
South Africans are now truly spoilt for choice within excess of 2 000 new model derivatives on offer in our vehicle marketplace. This fast pace is making repair quite dysfunctional on a practical level locally, and across the globe.
The “made in China” vehicles have a very thin line of professional back-up and methods of repair remain elusive, as well as contradictory in many cases that we have managed the research. These vehicles are already appearing in body shops around the country and are proving frustrating to say the least. No formulas for colours and parts that can be DHL’d to you! Waiting periods of nine weeks and longer are not uncommon. With work time added in, that’s almost three months of instalments the customer will pay, while awaiting for their mode of transport returned. What kind of sustainable package is this? Or maybe that is the idea behind it all.
Single-use vehicles have already been launched. Just where does that leave the repair industry? With Brazil already shipping models back to China that can’t be repaired, will the rest of the globe follow suit? That means even fewer parts to be sourced, and it leaves repairers high and dry.
The raft of hybrid vehicles will also ultimately contribute to further delays as battery component damage is seen as another key issue to their sustainable life cycle. These too have delays – and let’s not even begin to speak about the recycling of them.
This all-change market of new territory in competency and complex repair methodology is clearly an unpredictable path. This will place extra demands on insurance short-term book cover to meet ever more stringent standards on vehicle collision repair.
Early investors into electric technology will have already recognised that tooling and training for the vehicles of tomorrow is going to be a constant part of upskilling technicians to keep pace with the raft of new developments that are clearly in view right now.
By Claire Macfie
