Unsolicited body-shop calls irk many accident victims

The rub is, body shops get the police reports before the victims themselves.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- Darrell E. Herrmann wasn't truly irked until he realized that the auto body shop employee speaking to him on the phone knew more about his May 12 car crash than he did.
The May 16 call to Herrmann's home had been unsolicited, as was the prerecorded message from another body shop that had come in a few hours earlier. Both wanted his business.
Herrmann, a retired Army field artillery captain, was baffled. He had been trying to get a copy of his Columbus Division of Police accident report all weekend, with no success. Now it was Tuesday, and his insurance company still hadn't seen it, either.
"They were waiting for the Web site, same as I was," he said.
He asked the woman on the phone: How was it that she already knew the details about his crash?
"She said she had the complete police report, that they e-mailed it to her," Herrmann said.
For Herrmann, that day marked the start of a blitz of cold calls and unsolicited mail from body shops and lawyers.
"I got some chiropractors, too," he said.
For victims, accident reports are crucial to navigate the after-crash world of insurance claims and car repairs.
Public and personal
Although they chronicle personal trauma, the reports also are public information, available by law to anyone who wants them. For years in Columbus, that has included savvy entrepreneurs hoping to make money off the wrecks.
Police say that the requests by businesses have long been a burden on staff members and that they've sought to ease it with the help of technology.
About a year ago, police began e-mailing all accident reports to people who had standing requests for them. Within the past few weeks, the division streamlined the process even further.
Police now dump the reports online in massive files that chiropractors, lawyers, body shops and any other interested parties can dig through daily to get the names and numbers of accident victims. Police say the new approach is much more efficient than tying up their copying machines and employees, running off paper reports.
Getting them first
The rub: The businesses that solicit accident victims such as Herrmann often are getting the reports before the people named in them, sometimes by as much as a day.
Here's why:
All reports are scanned to be put online. The lawyers and chiropractors aren't looking for a specific report; they want all of them, easily more than 500 printed pages each day.
"We just do them in batches," said Ellis Kirk, a print-shop supervisor.
Those initial bulk files aren't searchable. John Doe's crash report is buried in there somewhere, but for Doe to find it, he'd have to go through every page.
"It would be like pulling a needle out of the haystack," said Cheryl Foley, a police records supervisor.
Police put the reports online a second time, in a format that can be searched. But employees have to attach identifiers such as the names of those involved and the locations of the crashes.
"Records still has to pull them up one at a time and index that," Kirk said.
That causes the lag Herrmann experienced.
"This has happened to a lot of people," Kirk said.
Police have thought about stalling the bulk release until the individual reports are logged in, but the division then would be deliberately delaying the release of public information that lawyers and the like would argue suits them just fine in the bulk format.
"No matter what you do, you're sticking your foot in a trap," Foley said.
Police said about 120 businesses have expressed interest in the daily reports. The division still charges 5 cents a page if someone wants them printed out, but all the files online are free.
Calls pay off
Jorge Bourzac, a manager at Mid-Ohio Collision in Columbus, said his body shop is among those that use the accident reports to find customers. Mid-Ohio Collision was the first business to call Herrmann on May 16, Herrmann said.
Bourzac acknowledged that the calls anger some people. But three years of making them have yielded some loyal customers who might not have found his shop otherwise, he said.
His solicitation makes more sense than someone cold-calling an uninterested homeowner about a new roof or windows, Bourzac said.
"They pay their insurance bill and they want their car repaired. It's not as hit-or-miss with this. It's a paper trail."
Herrmann had another problem with the calls. "That's telemarketing, and I'm on the 'do-not-call' list, but I got the calls anyway," he said.
Mark Anthony, an Ohio attorney general's spokesman, said his office agrees that the businesses making the unsolicited calls would have to adhere to the requirements of the National Do-Not-Call Registry. The registry allows consumers to make their telephone numbers off-limits to most telemarketers and requires businesses to avoid them or face civil action that can include fines.
"This would be a violation," Anthony said. "They're selling by telephone."