Verbal authorization

Verbal authorization is a customer saying yes on the phone. It matters most on the second call, the one where the job turns out bigger than the written estimate, and its whole value comes from what gets typed onto the repair order in the ninety seconds after the call ends.

Is verbal authorization legal?

In California, with strings attached. Business and Professions Code section 9884.9 sets the baseline first: the shop must give the customer a written estimated price for labor and parts, and "no work shall be done and no charges shall accrue before authorization to proceed is obtained from the customer." Going past that estimate needs "the oral or written consent of the customer," obtained after the shop knows the estimate is short and before the extra work is done.

California's Bureau of Automotive Repair says the same thing in plain words for consumers: "You must authorize the repairs before the auto shop can begin work on your vehicle." The board lists written, oral and electronic authorization as acceptable forms of that consent.

Other states set their own requirements, and New York arrives at the same note. Its repair-shop rule lets a customer give an oral work order, then says that order "shall be noted on the invoice and shall include the date, time and manner of authorization and by whom such authorization was given". Two regulators wrote that independently, which tells you what the note is for.

The California language is worth reading anyway, because it describes the process a shop should follow in any state with a consumer-protection complaint process, which is all of them.

What has to be written down?

The statute spells it out. If the consent is oral, the shop "shall make a notation on the work order of the date, time, name of person authorizing the additional repairs, and telephone number called, if any, together with a specification of the additional parts and labor and the total additional cost."

Then it has to survive to the invoice. The shop either repeats those same facts on the invoice or, on completion, gets the customer's signature or initials on an acknowledgment reading "I acknowledge notice and oral approval of an increase in the original estimated price." One of those two happens on every job that grew, and the second one is easier to collect at pickup than to reconstruct in a dispute.

When does a shop need one?

Any time the number moves. A repair order written for a water pump and a belt, that comes back needing a fan clutch, has left the authorized amount behind, and the fan clutch is unauthorized work until somebody says yes and somebody writes it down.

Teardown work is the case built for this. A cab-off injector job or a transmission that has to come apart before anybody can price it starts with an authorized teardown and ends with a call carrying the real number. Diesel tickets swing hardest here, because the difference between "it needs injectors" and "it needs injectors and a high-pressure pump plus the lines" is thousands of dollars discovered with the truck already in pieces.

Where does it fail?

Three places, and none of them are exotic. The call happens and nobody notes the amount, so the record shows approval for something with no price on it. The call happens with the wrong person, usually a spouse or a driver with no authority on the account. Or the call never happens at all, because the tech was in the middle of the job and the part was already off the truck.

The last one is the expensive one. Work done before consent cannot be undone at the counter, and the customer holds the entire argument. A service writer who stops the job to make the call loses an hour of shop time and keeps the ticket.

How should the call go?

Short, specific and in the customer's own words. Name the part, name the total, name what happens if they say no, then read the new total back and write it down while they are still on the phone. Approval for "whatever it needs" is not approval for a number, and it will not read as one later.

Record the outcome either way. A yes becomes a note and a line on the ticket. A no becomes declined work with a date and a price, which is the record that protects the shop when the same truck comes back on a hook. Both take the same thirty seconds.

Back to the glossary, or read how an estimate gets priced.