The following excerpt is from an article “State reports find fraud rate of 42% in auto body repairs,” published in theSacramento Beenewspaper in September of 2003.
The Bureau of Automotive Repair (BAR), a branch of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, investigates complaints about collision-repair shops in California. “For the past two years,... consumers have been steered to BAR to determine if their cars had been properly fixed by collision-repair shops across the state. Of the 1,315 vehicles inspected in the two-year BAR study that ended in June, 42 percent were overbilled for labor not performed or parts not supplied, Consumer Affairs Director Kathleen Hamilton said at a news conference last week.... The average loss was $812.”
Is the following critique of the BAR study valid or invalid?
The article continues, “John Walcher, vice president of Caliber Collision Centers, a chain of auto-repair shops, called the BAR report ‘statistically insignificant.’ During the study period, more than 3 million cars probably were repaired in California’s body shops–but BAR ‘looked at only 1,300 cars that met their criteria,’ he said.”