What Extended Warranty Adjusters Actually Ask on Approval Calls
Every extended warranty approval call follows roughly the same script, but most service advisors learn it the hard way, one hold queue at a time. We went back through our transcribed approval calls between repair shops and extended warranty companies and counted what adjusters actually request, and how often.
If you prepare the top five items before you dial, most calls resolve in a single conversation.
The numbers
| What the adjuster asks for | How often it comes up |
|---|---|
| Vehicle VIN | 71% of calls |
| Claim or authorization number | 65% |
| Price of parts and labor | 54% |
| Whether you are the selling dealer or an outside facility | 51% |
| Contract or policy number | 49% |
| Labor time for the operation | 43% |
| Current mileage | 42% |
| Customer name | 32% |
| Part numbers | 31% |
| The customer complaint | 24% |
| Your diagnosis | 21% |
| Deductible | 19% |
Two things stand out in this data.
The VIN is the real policy number. On most calls, the adjuster locates the contract by VIN, not by a contract number. Many contracts do not print a separate policy number at all, and asking the customer for one wastes time. Have the VIN ready before anything else.
Labor time comes up on almost half of calls. Adjusters verify your labor hours against their own labor guide. If you quote a flat menu price for an operation, know the labor time equivalent, because the adjuster will ask for it on roughly 43% of calls whether or not your shop bills that way.
What to have in front of you before you dial
- The VIN, typed somewhere you can read it digit by digit
- The repair order number and, if this is a follow-up, the prior authorization number
- Your parts list with numbers and prices
- Labor hours per operation
- Current mileage from the odometer, not from the last visit
- The customer complaint in one sentence, the cause, and the correction
That last item is the 3 Cs, and it is worth writing down before the call rather than improvising it on hold. See our guide to the 3 Cs of warranty claims.
Why this matters
An approval call where the adjuster has to wait while you find the mileage is a call that gets parked, transferred, or scheduled for a callback. The median approval call in our data runs about 7 minutes when the advisor has everything ready. Calls where information has to be hunted down stretch far longer, and a quarter of all calls already run past 15 minutes mostly on hold time alone.
ClaimRunners handles these calls for repair shops: our claims agents place the call, navigate the phone tree, and read your claim to the adjuster from a prepared sheet, so your advisors stay on the shop floor. The data in this article comes from those calls.
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