At least, it will if your experience is the same as Mrs Bearbull's, whose modest little Ford was rammed by a rogue trolley in said car park the other week. So - after terrifying the Waitrose store manager - off she went to the Ford repair centre to get a quote for fixing the scratched bumper.
Now, Mrs B does not know much about men in the motor trade, but she knows they're not politically correct. So - always alive to the possibility of a double entendre - her opening remark was: "I've come to see a man about my bodywork."
"That's the best offer I've had all day," said Darren, the mechanic (sorry, the bodyshop consultant).
"Well, give it time - it's only a quarter to nine."
Anyway, the scintillating repartee aside, Darren had a vital question: who was paying for the repairs, Mrs B or the insurance company?
"I don't know. It depends."
"Okay. I'll give you two quotes. One if you are paying; the other if it's the insurer."
And the amounts were: £150 if Mrs B pays (we're only talking about minor repairs here), or £400 if it's the insurer.
Small wonder then that, in referring the bigger issue to the Competition Commission for a full investigation, the fair-trading watchdog (the OFT) said that distortions in the motor-insurance market may result in "the cost of vehicle repairs provided to 'not-at-fault' drivers being higher than they might otherwise be".
Based on Mrs B's quote, that's an understatement and a half. True, the distortions might not always be so bad. Even so, based on the watchdog's own figures, they could add approaching 2.5 per cent to motor-insurance premiums. Each year in the UK motorists pay about £9.4bn in premiums. Of that, about £1.4bn is swallowed providing repairs and replacement vehicles for drivers who were the innocent victim of a prang. And, according to the OFT, those costs may be swollen by £225m thanks to the market's distortions. This is another way of saying that each year every motorist must add £10 to his or her policy premium to fund the market's oddities and kick-backs.
There is clearly some sort of market failure because, says the OFT, insurers of 'at fault' drivers - the ones who foot the bill - often "find it difficult to assess the extent to which the costs claimed are reasonable" and cannot control how repairs are provided. Yet, in practical terms, an insurer may have limited incentives to do so. After all, for every claim where it indemnifies the driver at fault - and therefore faces a fat bill - it's likely to insure a 'not-at-fault' driver in a claim where, so to speak, it's in the driving seat.
However, this does not imply that the market for motor insurance lacks competition. On the contrary, it indicates that competition is intense. As the OFT itself says: "Insurers appear to have a focus on gaining competitive advantage by becoming more successful at increasing revenues through referral fees and rebates, whilst raising their rivals' costs."
The crucial phrase is the one that I've italicised. By permitting - even encouraging - the providers of repairs and replacement cars to inflate their fees, insurers get a kick-back for themselves. But also - and this is the vital bit - they add to the costs that their rivals face. Where the rival is a big player - the likes of Admiral or Aviva - the net effect isn't important. Where rivals are small, marginal players, the effect of having to bear the extra costs that bigger players have contrived to dump on them could be existential - the difference between staying in the game or quitting.
In other words, by distorting the market with various incentives to service providers, big insurers are raising the barriers to entry for smaller insurers. And in an industry such as 'casualty' insurance - where barriers to entry are low and customer loyalty even lower - any way of restricting competition will be vigorously pursued.
And there is an investment moral in all this. At the best of times the insurance sector is unloved by investors. That's why shares in insurance companies so often trade at little more than the book value of pro-rata tangible net assets and why their dividend yields are so high. Yet the Competition Commission's probe indicates that a useful wheeze - useful for the big players, at least - will come under pressure and perhaps be shut down. So a commodity industry is set to become even more commoditised. Investors should treat insurance-company shares as warily as shoppers should treat that Waitrose car park.
