There are three kinds, not two
The one people forget is often the best of them.
- Original manufacturer parts are made by or for the company that built your car and sold through its own parts network, identical to what left the factory and the most expensive of the three.
- Aftermarket parts are made by a third party to fit your vehicle, and their quality ranges widely by maker and by part, with some certified under independent programs and others not certified at all.
- Recycled original parts are genuine manufacturer parts taken from another vehicle, so they are original equipment, they usually cost less than new, and insurers often specify them on older cars. Most people have never been offered the option by name.
The argument is nearly always framed as the first against the second. On an older vehicle the third is frequently the sensible answer, and it is the one nobody brings up.
Who actually decides
Not the shop, and that surprises people.
- Your policy
It sets out what the insurer will pay for. Some policies specify original parts for the first few years of a vehicle’s life and aftermarket after that, and plenty of others never specify originals at all. - The approved estimate
Your insurer writes or approves a line for each part, and that line names the type, so the shop is ordering against a document your carrier has already agreed. - You
You can pay the difference and have the original part fitted. That option is always open, and the figure is knowable before anyone orders anything.
So if you want a different part than the one specified, the conversation is with your adjuster first and with us second. We will tell you the difference either way.
What Washington gives you either way
Two entitlements, and both are in statute.
- The invoice has to name the type of part.
RCW 46.71.015(2) requires an invoice to carry “an indication whether the parts supplied are rebuilt, or used, if applicable or where collision repair is involved, aftermarket body parts or nonoriginal equipment manufacturer body parts, if applicable.” Read that line before you pay. - You can keep the old part, and RCW 46.71.021 requires a shop to return replaced parts to you when the work is finished, as long as you asked for them at the time you authorized the repair. Ask at the start, because afterwards is too late.
A third protection sits alongside them. Under RCW 46.71.025 a repair facility “may not charge the customer more than one hundred ten percent, exclusive of retail sales tax, of the total shown on the written price estimate” without asking you first. A parts change that moves the total has to come back to you.
What we do when a specified part does not fit
The part comes off again. That is the whole policy.
We comply with what your insurer specifies, and where an aftermarket part then fails on fit, finish or function, we photograph it, document it, and order the original part instead. The photographs matter more than the argument does. An adjuster looking at a panel gap in a picture reaches a decision quickly, and a shop that only complains has given them nothing to act on.
We will not tell you we always fit original parts, because no shop working insurance claims can honestly say that. What we will tell you is which parts your estimate specifies, before the work starts.
How to read your estimate
Four lines worth finding before you authorize anything.
- The part descriptions. Estimating systems mark aftermarket, recycled and original parts with different abbreviations, and the key to them is usually printed on the estimate itself.
- Which panels are replaced rather than repaired, because a panel that is repaired rather than replaced raises no parts question at all.
- Whether a sensor sits behind any of them, because that drives a calibration whatever the part’s origin, and our ADAS calibration guide covers when it applies.
- The total, against the one you were quoted. The 110% rule above is what protects that number.