The Estimate Decides Which Replacement Part You Get

Short answer: No court and no regulator has decided who chooses the replacement part on a repaired car. What the documents show is narrower and more useful: the part is named on an estimate, New York's regulator caps an insurer at three non-OEM suppliers for any one repair, and a federal court in 2009 found that insurers mandated or soft-mandated which estimating software their direct repair shops used.

By Anthony Braswell for Quorum Industries LLC, The Autobody Directory · Updated 2026-09-05 · How this was written, and what the machine may not do

How this page was produced: Researched, drafted and checked with AI assistance under human direction, and signed off by the named author. How this site is written

This page makes no claim to know who made the choice on your car. The 2009 finding was made on a preliminary-injunction standard, while the court was asking a question about software competition rather than about body shops. Seventeen years later, the software that writes the estimate is also the marketplace that sells the part.

What each document is worth

The decision is recorded on one piece of paper

Whoever made the choice, the place it shows up is the estimate. That is the line-by-line document listing each part, its type, and its price. It is written in estimating software, and the software is not a neutral notepad: a federal court described the product as three things together, a spreadsheet of line items, "the database from which parts and labor costs are pulled", and the software that totals the job. [ADJUDICATED]

So the honest way to ask your question is not "did the insurer or the shop decide?" It is: who wrote this estimate, in whose software, and who is being paid for each line.

New York wrote its rules as though the insurer names the supplier

New York's regulator has written unusually detailed rules about non-original crash parts. We have not surveyed the other states, and we do not claim it is alone. Read the trigger words carefully. 11 NYCRR 216.7(b)(5) opens:

"If the insurer's repair estimate is based upon the use of any non-OEM crash part:"

then subparagraph (i):

"the estimate shall specify the non-OEM or non-OEM supplier;"

and subparagraph (ii), with its conditions intact:

"the insurer shall not, without consent of the insured or the insured's designated representative, specify non-OEM crash parts from more than three different suppliers for any one repair;"

[STATUTE] Both passages were confirmed on two independent hosts for this page, Cornell's Legal Information Institute and Justia; the New York Department of Financial Services quotes subparagraphs (i) and (ii) in its own 2004 opinion letter as well.

Three things follow from the passages quoted above. Paragraph (b)(5) has seven subparagraphs and the rest are not quoted here, but one of them belongs in any page asking who picks the part: subparagraph (v) provides that "the insurer shall specify only certified crash parts, in regard to any part that has been duly certified by a qualified certifying entity acceptable to the superintendent". That is a regulator writing, in the imperative, about which part the insurer may specify. [STATUTE, confirmed on the same two hosts.]

First, the rule's subject is the insurer specifying a supplier. A regulator does not cap a party at three of something unless that party is doing the specifying. Second, the cap is per car, not per year: "for any one repair" is in the regulation. An insurer using thirty suppliers across its book breaks nothing; an insurer naming four on your car, without your consent, is outside the rule. Third, the Superintendent did not forbid the practice. He capped the number of suppliers, required disclosure, and in the subparagraphs not quoted here required the part to equal or exceed the comparable OEM part in fit, form, finish, quality and performance, required warranty cover, and made the insurer restore the vehicle to preloss condition at no cost to the insured if the non-OEM fails to honour that warranty.

What it does not establish is who names the supplier on a shop's own estimate. Every duty in (b)(5) is triggered by "the insurer's repair estimate" and every duty is addressed to the insurer. A shop writing its own estimate is outside the paragraph entirely.

What a court did find, and what it did not

In 2009 the Federal Trade Commission sought to block a merger between two estimating software companies. Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, found:

"This is because insurance companies either 'mandate' that members of its DRP use the same Estimatics product used in-house or recommend (issue a 'soft mandate') that they use the same product."

The court also found that the "stickiness" of that arrangement "affects both insurance companies and repair facilities because if an insurance company is unwilling to switch, the repair shops" in its direct repair program typically will not switch either. The support cited is not a body shop's complaint. It is the industry's own paperwork, plaintiff's exhibits produced in discovery, including one summarised in the opinion as "Insurance DRP Mandates continue to drive market." [ADJUDICATED]

Two qualifications belong in the same breath. This was a preliminary injunction ruling on a reasonable-probability standard, made to hold a merger still pending an administrative trial that never happened. And the finding sits in the barriers-to-entry part of the analysis: the court was asking whether a new software entrant could win customers, not whether body shops are treated fairly. Body shops were in that case as a class of software buyers whose switching behaviour mattered to the merger analysis. Nobody in that courtroom was arguing about whether they are treated fairly.

We are not saying a court has found that insurers decide which part goes on your car. That opinion says nothing about who selects a part. Asked directly whether it addresses the selection or specification of a replacement part, the answer was that it does not, on a read that in the same pass found "Estimatics", "parts and labor", "parts locator" and "aftermarket" in the same document. The absence is real, and anyone citing this case as a parts case is wrong.

What the case does establish is one link back: the buyers of estimating software are "insurance companies and auto repair facilities", and on the 2009 evidence, for a shop in a direct repair program, the insurer effectively picked which one it ran. Nothing in the record tells us whether that is still so.

The system that writes the estimate is now the shop that sells the part

CCC Intelligent Solutions' annual report for 2025 describes its parts platform as letting suppliers "give their parts maximum visibility at the moment when repairers are using CCC software" to write their repair estimates. The same filing says "Our technology facilitates the majority of the automotive insurance DRP in the U.S." and that "Insurer-to-shop DRP connections have created a strong network effect for CCC's platform". [COMPANY]

Put the 2009 finding next to the 2025 filing and you have the shape of the thing: the choice of estimating platform, which a court found in 2009 the insurer makes for its direct repair shops, is now also the choice of which parts marketplace is put in front of the shop at the moment it writes the estimate. The filing claims visibility, not compulsion: participating suppliers get their parts seen inside the software, and repairers "can also" order through it. That juxtaposition is an inference, made by us, and it is labelled as one.

The company's own answer deserves to be given fairly, because it is a good one. The filing describes repairers "selecting parts from multiple vendors through a single shopping cart and invoice", and the filing says its customers "include approximately 6,000 parts and diagnostics suppliers", which is a customer count, not a count of suppliers in the ordering screen. Aggregating thousands of suppliers into one ordering screen is faster than telephoning four vendors, and it widens a shop's choice rather than narrowing it. Asked directly whether that filing describes insurers directing, mandating or influencing which suppliers repair facilities use, the answer was that it does not. We do not claim that CCC's parts marketplace requires anything of any shop. No document we could open says it does.

What shops have alleged, and what happened to it

Hundreds of collision shops sued a group of insurers in a consolidated federal case. As the Eleventh Circuit sitting en banc recited their complaints, the insurers were alleged to "mandate participation in their parts procurement process". [ALLEGED] The shops also pleaded that they "derive seventy to ninety-five percent of their revenue from customers who pay via insurance". [ALLEGED]

Most of those claims were dismissed at the pleading stage. On the price-fixing theory the court held that "Following the example set by a competitor, without agreeing to do so in advance, is textbook 'price leadership'--a practice we have repeatedly stated is insufficient to establish the existence of an agreement." [ADJUDICATED] The tortious interference claims were sent back.

A dismissal on the pleadings is not a finding that the allegations were false. It is a ruling that, taken as true, they did not state a claim. No discovery tested them either way, and nothing here says the shops' allegations are true. One detail cuts against the simplest story: the court recorded that "None of the Body Shops here are currently a party to a DRP, and only one has apparently ever been." Whatever those shops were describing, it was not a term of a contract they had signed.

A separate source describes the same mechanism, and it is worth exactly what it is worth. A New York Assembly bill, A6902, sponsored by Assembly Member Englebright, came with a memorandum whose justification says insurers "have been directing auto repair businesses to procure their parts from an online source and will only reimburse the repair shop if they do so", and that "The online source only provides the repair shop with the lowest priced replacement part". [BILL] That is one legislator's assertion in support of his own bill. The bill was referred to committee and never reported out. A failed bill is evidence of what somebody tried to prohibit. It is not evidence of what the law is, and there is no committee finding, hearing record or adverse party's answer behind it.

What is interesting is only this: two sources with nothing in common, a set of dismissed complaints in the southeast and a memorandum by a New York legislator, describe the mechanism the same way, and neither describes an order. Both describe a payment condition. Corroboration between weak sources does not make them strong.

Where a legislature has drawn a line

Minnesota's statute on motor vehicle insurance adjustments prohibits an insurer, in collision cases, from acting to "specify the use of a particular vendor for the procurement of parts" or other materials necessary for the satisfactory repair of the vehicle, while adding that the clause does not require the insurer to pay more than a reasonable market price for parts of like kind and quality. The next clause in the same list forbids an insurer to "unilaterally and arbitrarily disregard a repair operation or cost" identified by an estimating system which the insurer and the collision repair facility have agreed to use in determining the cost of repair. [STATUTE] The quoted words above were confirmed on two independent hosts, the Minnesota Revisor's own site and FindLaw; the remainder of each clause is reported from the Revisor's text alone, so it is paraphrased here rather than quoted.

One legislature put the parts channel and the estimating system in consecutive clauses of the same list of prohibited acts. Reading that as a judgment that they are one problem is ours, not the legislature's.

Texas prohibits an insurer from limiting its coverage under a policy by specifying the brand, type, kind, age, vendor, supplier or condition of parts used to repair a vehicle, and from requiring a third-party claimant to use a particular vendor or supplier. Read the trigger: the prohibited act is limiting coverage, and the section opens with an exception for rules adopted by the commissioner. [STATUTE]

These two were found by following one phrase, not by surveying anybody. This page carries no count of how many jurisdictions have such a clause, because nobody has counted. We also found no enforcement action, market conduct finding or penalty under either provision, and we did not build a control for that search, so treat that as a gap in our work and not as proof that none exists.

What we could not verify

• That any insurer decides which part goes on any car. No court, agency or regulator has found it.
• What any direct repair program agreement says. Not one is public. No shop agreement, platform terms of service or insurer-platform contract was located.
• What a parts marketplace requires of a shop, if anything.
• Whether the 2009 market structure persists. The only public market shares anyone has are from evidence in that 2009 case and must be read as seventeen years old.
• What share of collision shops hold a direct repair program at all.
• Whether other states have written-notice rules of their own. We did not survey them, and this page names none it has not read.
• The rest of Minn. Stat. 72B.092, subdivision 1, clauses (6) and (7). Only the words quoted above would confirm on a second host, FindLaw; the remainder of each clause rests on the Minnesota Revisor's text alone and is paraphrased here rather than quoted.
• Whether any enforcement action, market conduct finding or penalty exists under the Minnesota or Texas provisions. We found none, and we did not build a control for that search, so that is a gap in our work and not proof that none exists.
• How many jurisdictions have a parts-channel clause of this kind. Nobody has counted, so this page carries no count.
• The five subparagraphs of 11 NYCRR 216.7(b)(5) not quoted here. They are described from the regulation's text, not reproduced.

What you can actually do

You have a right to the estimate, and that is the document to read. Ask who wrote it and in whose software. Ask what each part line is: original equipment, aftermarket, recycled, reconditioned. Ask who is being paid for each one. If you are insured in New York and the insurer's estimate is based on non-OEM crash parts, the regulation forbids the insurer to specify those parts from more than three different suppliers on one repair without your consent. The duty is the insurer's; the regulation does not say what you may do if it is broken, and we found no enforcement action under it. In Hawaii the legislature decided the question the other way and said the choice is yours to buy: an insured who wants an original equipment part pays the difference, unless the manufacturer's warranty requires it.

Nowhere in the record we assembled does a car owner have a right to have an original part paid for, and nowhere does a shop have a public document it can point to that says who may direct its purchasing. The paper that would answer your question, a direct repair agreement or a platform's shop terms, is private. The paper you can actually get is the estimate.

Sources

• 11 NYCRR 216.7, Standards for prompt, fair and equitable settlement of motor vehicle physical damage claims. Confirmed on two independent hosts: https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/new-york/11-NYCRR-216.7 and https://regulations.justia.com/states/new-york/title-11/chapter-ix/part-216/section-216-7/ Both hosts show paragraph (b)(5) with seven subparagraphs, (i) to (vii), and both carry the text of subparagraph (v) quoted above. Subparagraphs (i) and (ii) are also quoted by the regulator in NY DFS OGC Opinion 04-12-09: https://www.dfs.ny.gov/insurance/ogco2004/rg041209.htm All three read on 2026-09-04.
• FTC v. CCC Holdings Inc., Civil Action No. 08-2043 (RMC), D.D.C., memorandum opinion, public version filed 18 March 2009, Collyer J.: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_08-cv-02043/pdf/USCOURTS-dcd-1_08-cv-02043-0.pdf The judge's name is taken from the package metadata at https://www.govinfo.gov/metadata/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_08-cv-02043/mods.xml Opinion and metadata read on 2026-09-04.
• CCC Intelligent Solutions Holdings Inc., Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1818201/000119312526067448/ccc-20251231.htm read on 2026-09-04.
• Quality Auto Painting Center of Roselle, Inc. v. State Farm Indemnity Co., Eleventh Circuit en banc, No. 15-14160, 4 March 2019 (the consolidated appeal in In re Auto Body Shop Antitrust Litigation): https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201514160.enb.pdf read on 2026-09-04.
• New York Assembly bill A6902 and the sponsor's memorandum in support: https://nyassembly.gov/leg/?default_fld=&leg_video=&bn=A06902&term=2021&Summary=Y&Memo=Y read on 2026-09-04.
• Minn. Stat. 72B.092, subdivision 1, clauses (6) and (7). Confirmed on two independent hosts: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/72b.092 and https://codes.findlaw.com/mn/insurance-ch-59a-79a/mn-st-sect-72b-092.html Both hosts read on 2026-09-04.
• Tex. Ins. Code 1952.301: https://law.justia.com/codes/texas/insurance-code/title-10/subtitle-c/chapter-1952/subchapter-g/section-1952-301/ and https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/insurance-code/ins-sect-1952-301.html Both hosts read on 2026-09-04.
• Haw. Rev. Stat. 431:10C-313.6: https://law.justia.com/codes/hawaii/title-24/chapter-431/section-431-10c-313-6/ read on 2026-09-04.

Corrections

This page was published on 2026-09-05, and nothing in it has been corrected since. When a correction is made, it will be recorded here with the date, what the page used to say, and why it changed.

General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.

Where this fits

Each link says what it is for. We add one only when a reader on this page has a real reason to need that page next.

• Aftermarket Parts Disclosure and Your Right to Sue (Once you know the estimate names the part, the next question is whether your state requires anyone to tell you.)
• Blocking Aftermarket Parts At The Border (The other side of the same fight: whether a carmaker can stop those parts reaching the country at all.)