State Farm’s parts procurement program has been under fire since the initiative was launched in April 2012. There isn’t a body shop, PDR technician or anyone who has to work with insurance companies that hasn’t heard of it and who isn’t trying to figure it out on a daily basis.

This program has faced fierce criticism, outrage and debate and has dominated conversations at the Collision Industry Conference (CIC) and association meetings throughout the nation. It has even been the cause of the formation of at least four new auto body associations and has even captured attention internationally.

The promise given by State Farm was that the program would provide improved parts availability, quality, order accuracy, competitive pricing and process efficiency. The purpose of the program is to decrease, if not eliminate, repair delays caused by parts ordering issues, the millions of dollars in rental vehicle expenses that is spent daily across the industry and the high parts costs that are reducing the number of repairable vehicles in shops and by PDR technicians.

The industry doesn’t quite see this program as the white horse coming in to save the day. PartsTrader has been overwhelmingly met with resistance from repairers and associations that say that it cuts into their profits, slows operations, creates additional work and extends cycle time. Add to this the fear that the program could spread to other insurance carriers and cause shops to renounce control over yet another aspect of their business.

Fortunately, FenderBender has taken the lead in discovering what to expect and what is happening even now. The rest of this article is taken in part, if not in whole in some areas, from FenderBenders interviews and personal mission to get to the bottom of this. Starting with: head over to Part II to start.