Teenagers Suspected of Montana Auto Glass Vandalisms

by Windshield Replacement Phoenix on January 23, 2012

A group of teenagers has just been identified as the most likely culprits behind the widespread auto glass vandalism in Billings, Montana.  According to police, they were able to hone in on the suspects due to a tip that led to further developments in their investigation, ending ultimately in them identifying—although they have not released the suspects’ names—a group of teenagers of mixed gender whose ages ranged from 14 to 16.

The auto glass vandalism in the Montana city were serious indeed, with people remarking that it was one of the most costly sprees they had yet seen in the area.  Even with other cities in other states experiencing similar runs of vandalism, the Billings one has been especially remarkable, with well over two hundred and possibly even three hundred cars vandalized.  This figure was staggering, especially with vandalism in other areas merely being at the 20 to 40 range.

The spree got so bad that it prompted authorities to offer a reward for any tip that would lead to an actual and valid arrest related to the vandalisms, a reward to the tune of $1000.  By that time, citizens were understandably worried about their vehicles, regularly checking in with the police department in hopes of finding out that the suspects had been caught.  All police had to go on for a while, though, was that the vandals were using the typical implements auto glass vandals do, from BB guns to stones picked up alongside the road.

The only positive outcome of the spree was experienced by the local auto glass repair businesses, as they reported a massive influx of customers as soon as the vandalisms started.  With victims in the hundreds, auto glass repair and replacement shops were suddenly choked with customer appointments, with some customers even being booked for the following week due to a packed shop itinerary.  According to some local automobile glass technicians, some stores even had to keep longer hours just to keep up with the demand for their services, which kept on going as the vandals continued their mischief.  The result, according to the local police, was damage in the $150,000 range—no mean cost indeed.

While the police say that they are confident that they have found the culprits, citizens are asking for more certainty than that, and are asking why no arrests have been made concerning the auto glass vandalism cases, if so.  At the very least, the vandalism do seem to have stopped, and police are hopeful that they have caught all the culprits due to that.  Locals, however, are still warned to remain wary in order to make sure that their cars are safe, just in case.

Tagged as: Auto Glass, Teenagers, Vandalism, Windshield Repair

Auto Glass Repair and Replacement Brand Safelite Gets Angie’s List Award

by Windshield Replacement Phoenix on January 12, 2012

One of the largest and most widely distributed brands of auto glass repair and replacement, Safelite, has just been named as one of the recipients of the Angie’s List Super Service Award, which is given to businesses that meet a rigorous set of requirements for that honor.  The President and CEO of the auto glass repair brand, Tom Feeney, has already released a comment regarding the award, calling it the type of validation that makes all of the company’s efforts at consumer satisfaction worthwhile.

The auto glass repair brand had to meet some prerequisites to even qualify as a candidate for the award.  For example, Angie’s List requires that those up for the Super Service Award meet the functioning guidelines described on their website.  Furthermore, the business should also as few reports (negative ones, that is) as possible.

To clarify, it is necessary to understand how Angie’s List operates.  Angie’s List is basically an aggregation center online that puts together various and validated consumer reviews for companies and practitioners in the service industry.  In other words, it is something like a service industry reviews equivalent of the aggregation site for film reviews, Rotten Tomatoes.  However, it is worthwhile to point out that while both sites make a point of putting together only verified reviews from verified sources, Rotten Tomatoes relies on “experts” such as film critics or newspaper film reviewers for their material, whereas Angie’s List is built very soundly on a consumer-driven foundation.  The reviewers on Angie’s List are the consumers themselves, who undergo a verification process too (as do their reviews) in order for the website to ascertain that the reviews or reports are valid and that no foul play—as, say, a company member posting a glowing review of his own company—crops up on the site.

Auto Glass Repair Phoenix

Members of Angie’s List are also capable of posting or submitting negative reports on a company’s services, partly to provide others with an account of what happened for them in their dealings with the company and partly to incite a Complaint Resolution process.  This, taken together with a

Hence, for the auto glass repair company Safelite to qualify as a candidate—and recipient—of the prestigious Angie’s List award, it would have to have very few negative reports submitted for it along with very high marks in the reviews posted for its services.  As the auto glass repair company had these as well as compliance with the Angie’s List guidelines on how service businesses should operate, it managed to nab the award.  The award is probably a very good thing for the company right now, considering that it was only recently facing serious flak for a pricing system discovered by a local news team that saw more than a few consumers disgruntled.

Windshield Replacement Phoenix

3001 N. Randolph Road #GF4

Phoenix, AZ 85014

(602) 792-5954

http://www.windshield-replacement.com

Tagged as: Angie's List, Arizona, Auto Glass Repair, Phoenix, Windshield Replacement

Massachusetts Auto Glass Repair Shop Owner Pleads Guilty to 40 Counts

by Windshield Replacement Phoenix on January 7, 2012

Sam Abate TucsonJust a little earlier this year, people were talking about the persistence of auto glass fraud claims throughout recent years.  Recently, a Massachusetts case has just highlighted the problem again: a 53-year-old auto glass repair business owner, Robert Giller, has just pleaded guilty to no less than 40 counts in total, with half of those being classed as incidents of false insurance claims.

Robert Giller is a Peabody local who owns both an auto glass repair business, the New England Glass Co., and an automotive repair and body work centre, Advanced Automotive Concepts.  Giller was brought to court after two insurance companies became suspicious of the claims he had been submitting to them, which were already becoming extravagant as far as the average auto glass claims go. In a climate too where insurance companies are growing ever warier of dubious submissions, Giller’s claims were naturally scrutinised and submitted for investigation.

Apparently, Giller made 20 claims to several insurance companies, who all paid the amounts claimed by the auto glass repair shop owner.  Among the insurance companies listed were Safety Insurance, Fireman’s Fund, Electric Insurance, and Plymouth Rock Insurance.  Nearly $30,000 in fraudulent claims was submitted to insurance companies by Giller—not exactly an enormous amount, especially considering that other recent and high-profile insurance fraud cases have seen people being charged for submitting claims going up to hundreds of thousands or even a million in total.  Still, insurance fraud is insurance fraud, and as the judge involved in the case, David Lowy, noted, such incidents have an impact on the entire system of insurance as well as the judiciary itself.

Giller was represented by Attorney Tom Dreschler in court, and pleaded guilty to the 40 counts for which he was accused.  Besides the 20 insurance fraud counts, there were also 2 counts of attempted larceny, with the remaining 18 counts going to felonious larcenies.  Dreschler argued in favour of a far lighter sentence than what the prosecutors were demanding—a year of probation—by bringing forth witnesses who could attest to the defendant’s good conduct and character.  Dreschler also argued that Giller was in fact a model citizen and suggested very heavily that the chief reason Giller had actually chosen to plead guilty was to spare the judiciary of a long and expensive process in court.  In a classic move, Dreschler also had Giller’s developmentally challenged son brought into court at one point in the proceedings, apparently to demonstrate what sort of things Giller cared about.  The judge still sentenced the auto glass repair owner to 9 months of probation (which were still an improvement over the 1 year for which the Atty. General was angling) and also directed him to pay almost $40,000 in fines as compensation for his criminal offenses.

Tagged as: Auto Glass Repair, Crime, Massachusetts Auto Glass Repair, Pleads Guilty, Shop Owner

Las Vegas Auto Glass Repair Shop Offers Online QR Code for Discounts

by Windshield Replacement Phoenix on December 29, 2011

A Las Vegas auto glass repair shop called Auto Glass Authority is currently celebrating the holiday season by offering a QR code online for customers to use for discounts.  The QR code may be found on the company’s social networking site pages on both Facebook and Twitter as well as on the company’s actual webpage.  The code may be brought in by customers at any time from Christmas of this year to the first day of the coming new year in order to avail of a 10% discounted rate on any job performed by the company’s employees in its N Gibson facilities in Henderson.

The auto glass repair company’s use of a QR code is not actually novel: a lot of companies, especially automotive ones, use QR codes around special holidays for customers to use during their purchases and get discounts from.  The QR code, also known as the Quick Response code, is one of the most easily readable—at least, for machines designed to scan and read such codes—code formats at the moment, which explains the name Quick Response or QR code.  Aptly enough, it was designed specifically for use in the automotive industry, and was even created by a subsidiary of the automobile maker, Toyota.  However, QR codes have expanded far beyond the automotive industry since their development, and are now being used for things other than tracking products during the fabrication process, as indeed their original purpose was.  Now, QR codes can be used for things such as the discount being offered by Auto Glass Authority to its customers.

All customers have to do is go to the company’s website or social website pages and search for the QR code, which looks like a white square filled up with smaller black squares in what may seem to be a random pattern.  This can then be printed and brought by the customer to the auto glass repair company’s N Gibson location, where the 10% discount shall be applied regardless of the type of service the customer requests.  This can represent significant savings, and at a time when a recession is still threatening so many people’s livelihoods, every saving counts.  Deals such as this are exactly what customers need to help them make it through these tough times.

The Auto Glass Authority auto glass repair shop performs all necessary glass services, from windshield repair and replacement to window installation for automobiles.  The brand was founded over three decades ago by Mike Fox, and has since expanded to a total of four locations, all working off the Las Vegas area.  The company is known for using a 12-point checklist when evaluating cars it is about to work on, in order to maintain exacting and consumer-satisfaction-oriented standards.

Windshield Replacement Phoenix

3001 N. Randolph Road #GF4

Phoenix, AZ 85014

(602) 792-5954

http://www.windshield-replacement.com

Posted from Phoenix, Arizona, United States.

Tagged as: Auto Glass Repair, Henderson Nevada, La Vegas, Windshield Replacement Phoenix

B.T. Pearson Adds Auto Glass Repair and Replacement to Utah Services

by Windshield Replacement Phoenix on December 22, 2011

Local Utah business B.T. Pearson Tires & Service has just bought into the Techna Glass franchise, adding auto glass repair and replacement to the list of services it provides to Utah consumers.  The business, which is locally owned as well as operated by Tom Hooker and Brad Pollman, already offers a variety of services that includes body service on vehicles, alignments, automotive air conditioning repair, and the like.  The acquisition of a Techna Glass franchise, then, rounds out the business’s offerings quite nicely.

According to the owners of the Utah auto business, they had been considering adding auto glass repair and replacement to their repertoire for some time already, and had only begun to truly set plans in motion some months ago.  The result was an approval from Techna Glass for the two to open a franchise for it and combine that with their already existing vehicle repair and maintenance services in hopes of growing their venture.

Although Techna Glass is already quite well known now, due to it having a fair distribution of shops across the US, the company is actually not an old one, strictly speaking.  The first Techna Glass shop, for instance, opened only a decade ago.  Still, this fact is not an arraignment against the shop or brand’s credibility: it must be remembered, after all, that auto glass repair and replacement is in itself a new industry, when compared to the history of automobile services on the whole.  Auto glass repair, in particular, is still fairly young as vehicle services or maintenance functions go.

This has to do with the development of the technology itself, of course.  Auto glass repair only started when the possibility of injecting a resin capable of mimicking the clarity, strength, and appearance of automotive glass was realised, and it took a while for other machines to start entering the picture.  Nowadays, for example, we can go to a car repair shop to request that someone perform a windshield repair on our car and see the technician come over with a set of tools that fit in a case he can carry in one hand.  The first windshield repair machine, though, was so large that it had to be moved about on the bed of a pickup truck.

So Techna Glass’s decade of history is already a fine and respectable one as far as the auto glass repair industry goes.  The technicians at the company’s stores are known for servicing just about any vehicle, from your average sedan to the bane of most auto glass stores: classic or vintage cars.  The owners of B. T. Pearson Tires & Service are already emphasising this flexibility in their new services in the area to the locals.

Tagged as: Auto Glass, Auto Repair, Services, Utah

Pendragon Partners with Auto Glass Repair Company Auto Windscreens

by Windshield Replacement Phoenix on December 20, 2011

One of the United Kingdom’s biggest and most well-known auto glass repair and replacement companies, Auto Windscreens, has just snagged another contract.  The company is apparently going to be partnering with none other than Pendragon PLC, which claims to be the biggest independent operator of automobile dealerships in the United Kingdom.  The company’s reach also stretches over the Atlantic, with it operating some dealerships in the United States.

The partner to the auto glass repair company, Pendragon PLC, is just one member of the huge Pendragon Group, whose origins date to the 4th of October in the year 1989.  Pendragon PLC is the member of the group that focuses more on luxury cars.  While the company has done fairly well—as may be seen by its widespread distribution of about 300 locations—in the United Kingdom, but it actually has a pretty bad history when it comes to its dealings in the United States.  The problem has been related to a bad policy of paying overly high prices for luxury car dealerships in the US and replacing personnel with ones “from outside”.

This was most noticeable in the recent debacle with the Bauer Jaguar dealership that the company acquired eleven years ago.  The purchase seemed sound at first and in keeping with the company’s interests and speciality: the dealership was not only the biggest Jaguar dealership in the area, it was also one of the biggest (the 3rd, by some accounts) in the entire United States.  Due to the richness of the pickings, Pendragon was made to pay a dear price to get it.

The company made several mistakes from the get-go, however.  For example, it committed an error that has been discussed several times before in various settings, including those of political history: the replacement of local bureaucrats with external ones.  As anyone who has done world history knows, this has traditionally been cause for errors and inefficiency in various empires and governments, as the more seasoned and locally-experienced personnel are moved out in favour of moving in those who do not have as much experience in dealing with the local society and customs.  The same thing happened at Bauer Jaguar, where the tried and tested sales personnel were replaced, in a very unstudied move, by ones who had come from across the Atlantic and had not the experience necessary to deal with this new, American market.  The result was a disaster and the company eventually had to close the dealership.

The company’s offerings on the UK market seem to be performing marginally better, however, and the addition of a famous and well-trusted auto glass repair and replacement service such as Auto Windscreens (which comes with one of the most acclaimed service and communication models in the industry) may serve to enhance its offerings in that market.

Tagged as: Auto Glass Repair, Auto Windscreens, Car, Cars, Comapny, Luxury, Pendragon, Windshield

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