Why Cover License Plates in Collision Repair Customer Photos?

Table of Contents

• Do Customers Expect Their License Plates to be Covered for Privacy Reasons?
• Branded License Plate Covers
• Final Thoughts

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Every Auto Body Shop should be shooting before and after photos of their repaired vehicles. But your customers may not want their license plates being shown on social media or your website.

In addition to privacy issues, there are other reasons you should cover up their plates in your before and after collision photos.

Do Customers Expect Their License Plates to be Covered for Privacy Reasons?

People drive around every day with their license plates visible to everyone they pass, so what’s the big deal?

The deal is the perceived privacy issues - some people take privacy very seriously, and have fears over identity theft or stalkers. Or maybe they caused an accident in which someone was hurt. They probably want to disappear as much as possible, especially if they have vanity plates that other local people might recognize. 

There really isn’t much information that someone can gather by simply having a license plate number, unless you are a police officer or work at the DMV. 

This is due to the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, which was signed into law in 1994. The DPPA prevents people from being able to look up personal info based on a plate number.

Now, that’s not to say there aren’t creepy people out there sitting behind their computers. 

So even though it’s highly unlikely that someone can actually do anything with a plate number, the general public still perceives this as a privacy issue, so the question is - why wouldn’t you cover up their plates to put them at ease?

Branded License Plate Covers

What’s the best way to cover license plates? Magnetic custom plate covers are a great way to cover them in style, with your logo and color scheme.

By putting custom license plate covers on your customers’ vehicles, you have an easy opportunity to show your brand in every photo. Without the branded plate cover, every photo of a car looks pretty much the same. 

If you’re creating before/after photos for your repairs, you’ll be sharing them on your social media channels, whether it’s Facebook or Instagram, Youtube or Tiktok, or on your Google Business Profile. When photos are posted online, they become very easy for others to share (great), or for an unscrupulous shop owner to steal and use for his shop (not so great).

Either way, having your shop’s logo on plate covers reinforces where those pictures came from, and in the case someone shares a picture of their vehicle that your shop posted, then their friends will see they took their vehicle to your shop.

You can find plate covers online, and while there are a number of plastic ones that need to be screwed on, I much prefer custom-printed magnetic plate covers. These are aluminum plates with magnets that stick to the license plate bolts. They can be customized to include your logo, social media information, images, or anything else you’d want on the plate.

Two companies you can try are Cover My Plate and Covert Garage. I have personally used Covert Garage and the result was great.

Final Thoughts

If you aren’t taking before and after photos, get started today! If you are taking photos, covering your customers’ license plates is less about actual privacy concerns, and more about making your customers comfortable, and provides another branding opportunity for your repair shop.

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