Can I Choose My Own Body Shop in Arizona? 2026 [ARS 20-469]

Network Collision Repair is a family-owned body shop on Gilbert Road, repairing East Valley vehicles since 1995. We are not part of any insurer’s Direct Repair Program (DRP), which means we don’t owe a carrier faster turnaround times or lower parts bills. We work for the person who owns the car, not the company writing the check.

This matters because the shop that fixes your car answers to whoever it has a financial relationship with. A DRP shop has volume targets and pricing agreements with the insurer that referred you. An independent shop has one relationship: the one with you. Arizona law is built around protecting your ability to choose which of those two relationships you want managing your repair.

What Arizona Law Actually Says About Choosing Your Shop

Arizona’s unfair claims settlement practices statutes, including A.R.S. § 20-469, protect your right to select the repair shop that works on your vehicle after a covered loss. The core idea is simple: your insurance policy is a contract between you and your insurer to pay for covered repairs. It is not a contract that hands your insurer the authority to decide where those repairs happen.

An adjuster can recommend a shop. Many insurers maintain a list of DRP locations they steer claims toward because it’s faster and cheaper for them to administer. What an adjuster cannot legally do is tell you that you must use a specific shop, that your claim will be denied or delayed if you don’t, or that repairs elsewhere won’t be covered at a fair market rate. If you hear any of that, you’re listening to a sales pitch dressed up as a policy requirement.

This protection exists because the person choosing the shop and the person paying for the repair are not the same party in a collision claim, and without it, insurers would have every incentive to route every claim toward whichever shop accepts the lowest price per job. Arizona lawmakers recognized that a driver who just went through a crash is in a poor negotiating position to push back on a confident-sounding recommendation from the company they’re relying on to pay the bill, so the law puts the decision back in the policyholder’s hands regardless of who’s paying. It applies whether you’re filing against your own collision coverage or against the at-fault driver’s liability insurer, and it applies the same way whether the damage is a cracked bumper or a frame that needs to go on a measuring system.

What Insurer Steering Sounds Like on the Phone

Steering is rarely as blunt as “you have to use our shop.” It’s usually framed as a convenience or a warning, and it works because most drivers are stressed and want the call to end quickly. Listen for phrasing like:

• “It’ll go a lot faster if you use one of our preferred shops.” True sometimes, but speed isn’t the same as quality, and it’s your car.
• “We can’t guarantee that price if you go somewhere else.” Insurers are required to pay a fair market rate for your repair regardless of which licensed shop performs it, not just the rate their preferred shop agreed to.
• “That shop isn’t in our network.” Network language applies to health insurance, not collision repair in Arizona. There is no such thing as an auto body shop being “out of network” in a way that reduces your coverage.
• “We’ll need to send our own adjuster if you go elsewhere.” That’s normal and fine. An independent shop can write its own estimate and negotiate directly with that adjuster on your behalf.

If you’ve already had this conversation and aren’t sure what to do next, our insurance claim help guide walks through the claim process step by step.

How to Protect Yourself During the Steering Conversation

You don’t need to be confrontational on the phone with an adjuster, but a few habits make it much harder for anyone to misrepresent what was said later:

• Get the adjuster’s name and a reference or claim number at the start of every call, and write down the date and time.
• Ask directly: “Is this a recommendation or a requirement?” Most adjusters will clarify once asked plainly, because they know the honest answer is “recommendation.”
• Request anything unusual in writing. If someone tells you repairs elsewhere won’t be covered at a fair rate, ask them to email that statement. Verbal pressure tends to disappear once a paper trail is requested.
• Keep your own claim notes. A simple log of who you spoke with and what was said protects you if the story changes later in the process.
• Know you can switch even after dropping the car off. If you already left your vehicle somewhere you didn’t fully choose, you’re generally allowed to request it be moved before repairs start, and sometimes even after, though you may owe an extra tow fee.

Normal Insurer Behavior vs. Illegal Steering

Not every mention of a preferred shop is a violation, and it helps to know the line. An insurer mentioning that it has a network of shops, offering a list of options, or noting that claims at those shops tend to move faster is ordinary business communication. It crosses into steering when the message shifts from informing you to pressuring you: implying your claim could be denied, that repairs elsewhere won’t be paid at a fair rate, that a rental car won’t be covered unless you use their shop, or repeating the recommendation after you’ve already said you’ve chosen somewhere else. The first category is a disclosure. The second is an attempt to override a decision that’s legally yours to make.

Arizona’s Department of Insurance and Financial Institutions handles complaints about unfair claims practices, including improper steering, if an insurer crosses that line. Most situations never need to go that far. Simply stating clearly that you’ve already selected your shop and asking the adjuster to proceed with that shop’s estimate resolves the overwhelming majority of these conversations without any further escalation.

How Network Collision Handles a Steered Claim

When a customer calls us after their insurer already pushed them toward a different shop, the process looks the same as any other claim. We inspect the vehicle, write our own estimate, and submit it directly to the adjuster assigned to the claim. If the adjuster’s first number is lower than what the repair actually requires, we write a supplement with photos and documentation and negotiate it the way any shop, DRP or not, is expected to.

The difference is who we’re accountable to while that negotiation happens. A shop with a DRP agreement has an ongoing business relationship with the carrier to protect. We don’t, which means there’s no incentive on our end to under-scope a repair just to keep a referral pipeline open.

If your car was already towed somewhere you didn’t choose, you’re not stuck there. You can request the vehicle be moved, though you may be responsible for an additional tow if it’s already been dropped off. A quick call to us before you sign anything at the other shop can save that step entirely.

Why the Shop You Choose Still Affects What You Pay

The legal right to choose doesn’t mean every shop will scope or price a repair the same way. The honest range for common repairs in the East Valley in 2026 is wide, and where your car lands in that range depends heavily on whether the shop you picked is looking out for your interests or a carrier’s turnaround metrics.

A shop under pressure to close claims quickly has less incentive to catch everything that belongs in that estimate. An independent shop with no referral relationship to protect has every incentive to get the scope right the first time, since a comeback repair costs us time and reputation, not a carrier’s bottom line.

The real cost of an incomplete repair rarely shows up on the original invoice. It shows up months later as a rattle that turns out to be a clip that was never replaced, a paint edge that fades differently than the rest of the panel because a cheaper product was used, or a resale appraisal that flags mismatched panel gaps from a rushed job. None of that gets reflected in the number an insurer hands you on day one, which is exactly why the choice of shop matters as much as, or more than, the first price quoted.

Why Choose Network Collision Repair

We’ve been family-owned and operating on Gilbert Road since 1995, through Mitch’s parent company Network Automotive. We’re not chasing DRP volume, which means every estimate we write reflects what your specific car needs, not what keeps a referral pipeline moving. If your insurer disagrees with our scope, we handle that conversation directly so you don’t have to.

We also won’t talk you out of a second opinion. If you want to compare our estimate against the shop your insurer suggested, bring both in and we’ll walk through the difference line by line. For a broader look at what to do in the hours after a crash, see our what to do after a car accident guide.

Being family-owned for three decades in the same East Valley neighborhood means our reputation is built one repeat customer and one referral at a time, not one insurer’s renewal contract. That’s a different incentive structure than a shop whose growth depends on staying in good standing with a handful of national carriers. When those two incentives point in different directions, which one a shop is built around tends to show up in how thoroughly they write your estimate.

Related reading: Insurance Claim Help · What to Do After an Accident · Structural Damage Inspection · When Is a Car Totaled in Arizona · Post-Repair Inspection · All Services