The man they wish would go away

A whole lot of Melbourne insurers and repairers wish Tony Murdaka would choose another career. And you wouldn't blame him if he did, having had his company wound up after of a dispute with AAMI.
Mudarka's business was called Australian Automotive Motor Inspection Centre, (AAMIC) and when he advertised its services using an image of a girl holding a telephone AAMI believed it was close enough to its own advertising image to confuse consumers. AAMI took AAMIC to court for 'passing off' and won. Murdaka says he was two days late in offering cheques to pay the court order of $36,000 in damages and costs to AAMI, thereby giving the insurer, plus a number of other creditors, grounds to wind up AAMIC ‘ which they did.
Murdaka had been operating his vehicle inspection service from an address in Moorabbin, the smash repair centre of Melbourne. When the court decision went against him, he ceased the service and moved to Brooklyn on the Geelong Road in Victoria where, with a new company, he has gone back to body repairs, concentrating on fleet work, third party work and small repairs for the huge auto auction house next door. His company is called Fleet Management Australia.
But he's far from finished with inspections, he says. Right now he might do them on request, but he vows to make a comeback into the business of revealing substandard repairs and forcing rectifications on insurers who, in turn, send them back to the original repairers. Little wonder the Murdaka is not popular in some sectors of the smash repair industry.
His future will also be influenced by the outcome, he says, of a long running damages case, again with AAMI, involving several million dollars.
Court cases aside, Mudaka's work raises issues that go beyond one repairer or one insurer. Even if only a small percentage of his claims are true, the industry has some hard inward examination ahead of it.
Before his AAMIC company's demise, Murdaka claims he did over 400 inspections of 'repaired' vehicles and found that only 15 per cent passed as satisfactory. The inspections were done at the request of car owners who were not happy with their repairs and felt they could go no further with their insurer or repairer. Most of the failures were structural ‘ which Murdarka says could affect the safety of the vehicle ‘ especially if involved in another collision.
He lists as tyAAMIC offered a free initial inspection, then charged a fee to put the car on a Car Bench to check its alignment. Problems really weighed in when a finished and shiny car was shown to be out of alignment, because if it was pulled into shape the gaps around many panels would become distorted and have to be removed and refitted ‘ at considerable expense. One of Murdarka's 'trophies' (worthy of a place in the Guinness Book of Records) is a VR Commodore which has now had $100,000 spent on it for rectification. It still can't be driven because the front end has been 'lost' by the last shop to which it was sent for repair.
Contrary to the published findings of the General Insurance Enquiries and Complaints Scheme (IEC) which testified to the Productivity Commission that disputes were less than one per cent of claims, Murdarka believes there are least 500 complaints a month against completed repairs in Victoria alone; that's a 37 per cent rectification rate, and would be higher if policy holders knew what to look for.
Murdarka says he was ready to set up testing franchises all over Australia when his company was rolled, and that he has been followed and photographed by those who want to keep him from re-opening and promoting his inspection centre.
Like Tony Rugolo, the man he used to work for, Madarka believes that a car should not be declared roadworthy if it is out of alignment ‘ and that this can only be measured accurately on a jig system like Car Bench ‘ which also physically demonstrates mis-alignment. He has three Car Benches in his new company.