There are many ways to clean your auto glass, and you should in fact do your best to maintain its cleanliness by giving it a regular wash.  However, before you take your car to the local carwash or start spraying all sorts of car glass cleaners on your windows, give a thought first to the chemicals that are usually in the formulations used for this procedure: a lot of these are actually quite harmful to the environment, which means you should be as sparing as possible when using them.  In fact, it would be best if you avoided using them on the whole and stuck to greener options.

For example, one may whip up one’s own auto glass cleaner with some regular household items.  Most automobile experts and car shop owners actually strongly recommend using homemade auto glass cleaners because you get to have control over how much of the active (or stronger) ingredients are in the formulation.  Furthermore, making your own auto glass cleaner is often by far the more inexpensive option when it comes to buying maintenance items and implements for your automobile.

The best homemade auto glass cleaner that may also be considered a green alternative to most of the commercially produced solutions available on the market is typically made out of a compound of water and vinegar.  Regular vinegar may be used, although cider vinegar is also an option.  The mixture strengths vary according to the expert, but the general rule is to add more vinegar as you come across tougher grime or streaks on your windshield or windows.  If you go, then, from a basic formulation of 3 parts water to 1 part vinegar as the standard, you can go with a half-half mixture for a stronger solution.

If you do not want to make your own cleaner, there are also some auto glass cleaners out there that are both non-toxic to the environment and biodegradable, making them other excellent choices for your automotive cleaning work.  An example would be the Bio-Green cleaner from the company Recochem Inc., which also happens to produce an environment-friendly windshield washer fluid and other such “bio” products.  You can just search online for more recommendations if you want to go with something that has been premixed for you.  Still, it should not be too difficult to make your own solution.

If ever it so happens that you need to use a commercial product for auto glass cleaning that is not environmentally friendly, you can just go with the principle that less is more: the less of the harmful chemicals used, the better not just for the environment but for you as well, given that you shall be breathing in any potential fumes and getting some of the chemicals on your hands or clothes.

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.

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

Just 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.

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.

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.

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 4^th 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 3^rd, 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.

The UK-based auto glass repair company Auto Windscreens just revealed that its regular costs for verifying the addresses of potential clients had been cut by as much as 50%.  The impressive improvement is being credited to the company’s switch to a different software provider and program for the task, one that provides a more streamlined option compared to the auto glass repair brand’s former provider.

The difference is all in the details.  Expenses went down by the 50% figure for this aspect of the auto glass repair company’s operations not only because the new software provider, Postcode Anywhere, happens to provide its services for much less than the former provider did: they also went down because the solution the new software provider offered was more efficient in actual operation and very low in maintenance compared to the old program.

When the head of the company’s IT department was asked about it, he explained that the old program was troublesome because it had so many inherent restrictions and limitations on it.  Furthermore, updates of the address information had to be performed manually, as indeed were upgrades of the program, with the company being asked to oversee these updates with its own people, the vendor providing only the data by means of sending storage devices carrying it to the company’s IT staff.  The result was an inefficiently managed operation, one that saw the company having to worry about an updated database that it would have preferred to leave up to the provider of the service.

The shift to the Postcode Anywhere platform relieved the company of the regular update duties, shifting this task to the shoulders of the Postcode team.  The program is kept up to date without any hassles, running almost like a background operation that quietly and efficiently does its job of verifying addresses.  The result was a far smoother operation, lower costs for business, and better, more efficient services for customers.  In short, everybody won—with the exception of the old software vendor, that is.

The auto glass repair company is actually already reaping the benefits of its faster services.  It was among the top 50 call centres in the UK in the recent Customer Service Awards for call centres in the United Kingdom, actually taking the number two spot.  Clearly, its customer service has benefited immensely from the upgrade to better software and more efficient vendor.  Customers have been praising the service they get from the company’s call centres for a while now in informal interviews and the like, and speed is a crucial factor in this praise, as the high efficiency of the Auto Windscreens call centre systems has been spoken of positively many times before.

As far as security goes for the rich and famous, bulletproof auto glass is one of the top-of-the-line options when it comes to securing transportation, although its usage is still fairly rare in the United States.  In one particular country in Latin America, however, it seems that this type of car glass has been rapidly gaining favor among the upper classes, and people are now calling said country the next big market for bulletproof materials, auto glass just being one of them.  The country is Venezuela, which has been experiencing a 100%-per-year growth in the number of orders placed for armored cars with bulletproof glass.

That Venezuela’s upper crust is taking to sheathing itself with a thicker hide is probably to be expected given how much the fear of crime operates on the locals.  In surveys both in the past and at present, it has been shown that Venezuela’s residents are consistently harassed by the fear of being preyed upon by various criminals in the country, from murderers to ransom kidnappers and even to the burglary gangs.  This is apparently not simple paranoia: official figures from other bodies and organizations seem to agree with the fear by presenting data indicating rather high crime rates in the country.  Several studies even show Venezuela to have one of the highest murder rates around the globe.

As a result, the Venezuelan wealthy have been taking to expanded security, hiring larger retinues to escort family members to places and ordering armored cars from auto makers.  Bulletproof auto glass, in particular, is a favored trimming.  To be clear, armored vehicles are not simply ones with bulletproof windows and windshields: the body is also armored in order to prevent bullets from penetrating the metal portions of the car.  Another fairly common addition to the armor is the use of tires that have a chemical compound in them that, when the tire is punctured (as, say, by a bullet shot from a criminal), come out and form a temporary seal or patch for the hole.  The compound patch usually lasts around half an hour or below, but that is often sufficient time for the passengers and driver of the assailed car to escape to safety.

At the current time, the demand for bulletproof auto glass in Venezuela is going so strong that some reports show just a little under 2000 cars being fitted with the material each year, with the number steadily rising.  This is an expensive procedure—it can cost tens of thousands of dollars per car—so it is easy to see that bulletproof auto glass and car armoring services may be a very lucrative market in the country.  This may well prompt more garages and auto makers to offer armor options for cars offered in Venezuela.

The UK-based Brit Insurance has just chosen to award a contract to National Windscreens.  The contract is apparently going to hold for three years, according to the statement released by the two companies, and National Windscreens is going to be the insurance company’s auto glass repair and replacement company of choice for policyholders.

The announcement came quite soon after the recent move of the auto glass repair company from its old headquarters to the new Staffordshire base.  The move, said National Windscreens executives and marketing agents, was due to the growing business the company was experiencing and the need to keep providing customers with quick and constantly improving service levels.  The old location apparently no longer served its purpose as well as it used to, and this was the reason for the auto glass repair and replacement company moving its head office to Tamworth, Staffordshire.

National Windscreens has been experiencing remarkable growth in the past year.  At present, it now has 120 fitting centres, with over 800 mobile units under its belt.  Motorists in the UK know how difficult it is not encounter the brand at least once a week on the highways now, so widespread is the company’s business.  The new partnership with Brit Insurance can only strengthen the company’s performance in that respect, and National Windscreens directors and officials have been quick to point to the contract from the insurance provider as further testament to their brand’s reliability in the industry.

The contract also provides for the use of a facility owned by National Windscreens: the Quik Quote supplier management programme that permits National Windscreens employees to efficiently manage invoicing and costs for windshield providers that do not have approval.

Technically, National Windscreens is no stranger to the world of auto glass services for insurance policyholders.  Only this year, the company actually spent several months working with the Admiral Group, PLC in aid of Admiral Group member-company personnel being given the training necessary for handling glass claims and repair or replacement services associated with those claims.  The training was being managed by National Windscreens itself, which said that the curriculum consisted of a blend of theory and actual practice that would help participating personnel get a better sense of the industry. The Admiral Group also commented on the partnership and programme and said that it was a perfect fit for their current plans, especially in the area of improving policyholder experiences.

The auto glass repair company is continuing with its plans for further expansion.  Besides the recent move of its head office, it has also stated that it intends to have at least 200 new staff members by the end of this year, marking an impressive growth in its human resources.