I-CAR (the Inter-Industry Conference on Auto Collision Repair) has announced that it will extend free access to its Repairability Technical Support (RTS) Portal (https://rts.i-car.com/) through the end of the year. I-CAR offered complimentary access to RTS until May 31 through their COVID-19 Industry Relief Program, announced in March. The extension has been well received by the industry.

“We recognize the strong value RTS provides to the industry and have seen a large uptick in use, in particular, during April through July, aiding our decision to extend this important resource free of charge to anyone in the industry throughout the remainder of the year,” said Scott VanHulle, manager, RTS and OEM relations.

VanHulle noted a 23% increase or approximately 400,000 hits in RTS engagement during July 2020, over the same period last year, with the strong interest in all areas of the RTS’s website.

Launched in 2014, RTS is designed to offer the most up-to-date collision repair technical information at the fingertips of all of those in the collision repair industry through one, easy-to-navigate hub. RTS is a free service to current Gold Class shops/organizations, technicians with I-CAR Platinum status, Sustaining Partners, and anyone who has trained four or more times in the past 12 months.

A popular feature of RTS is “Ask I-CAR” where trained collision repair professionals can submit repair-related questions to I-CAR’s team of RTS experts. I-CAR strives to answer every inquiry within two hours, and often much sooner, and recently fielded its 28,000th “Ask I-CAR” question.

“We pride ourselves on answering each technical question as quickly and as thoroughly as possible as we understand how important having the right information is for everyone in the industry,” said VanHulle. 

The nature of the inquiries also provide I-CAR with invaluable real-time insights into the issues the technicians in the field are encountering daily, he added. “It’s a complete win-win, as we then use these insights to further our ongoing work with OEMs to enhance their repair information and procedures. This information also finds it’s way into I-CAR training courses and helps to inform where extra focus is needed in a course.”

“It’s about doing the right thing for the industry during this challenging time,” VanHulle said.