RACV settles with Kerry Panels

News

RACV has finally settled with Kerry Panels in Melbourne for a substantial sum. Kerry Panels owner Gerry Raleigh said he is now receiving RACV work and is pleased, although tired after a three-year fight.
The dispute between Kerry Panels and RACV started three years ago after a demonstration by repairers against a new RACV Accident Repair Centre opened almost opposite the bodyshop. Repairers were concerned at the prospect of losing work to the centre and RACV assumed Raleigh had instigated the protest. Since then, as has been widely reported, Kerry Panels claimed it was not receiving a fair go from RACV, despite quoting fairly for work from the insurer.
Raleigh said RACV had finally settled with him after he employed a firm of solicitors to look into the matter. "Once they [RACV] saw that, they wanted to talk," he said. Raleigh said a law firm had also agreed to take on his case pro bono after viewing records kept by him relating to possible defamation against his company. "If I had been able to keep the wolves from the door for another 12 months I would have run with that and really taken them [the RACV] to task," said Raleigh. "But no one came out to help me so I had to say enough is enough and in the end I have come out debt-free but it should never have got to this stage."
Raleigh said the only positive from the ordeal was that politicians are now taking an interest in the tactics of some insurers. Anthony Byrne, the Federal Member for Holt, for instance, is reported by Hansard as saying in Parliament in February after examining the Kerry Panels case; "Panel beaters are being driven to the wall unless they comply with the insurance industry and a weak ACCC is not willing to conduct a proper investigation."
RACV media manager John Rees made this statement in regard to the Kerry Panels case: "We have negotiated with Kerry Panels in confidence and we therefore are not willing to discuss this publicly." For Gerry Raleigh, the past three years have been very tough, but he is now vindicated in his stance against the insurer. "You've just got to stick at these things," he said.

NRMA subject of Senate Inquiry
Senator Nick Sherry (ALP, Tasmania) has advised MTAA executive director Michael Delany that the issue of the treatment of crash repairers by NRMA Insurance could be the subject of an Inquiry by the Senate Select Committee on Superannuation and Financial Services, of which Sherry is the deputy chair.
It is understood the Senate Select Committee has agreed in principle to the Inquiry going ahead. The Committee Secretariat is preparing to draft the Terms of Reference for the Inquiry. The VACC has advised however, against attaching too much importance to the move, coming just before the Federal election.