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🏛️ 2023 American Car Rental Association (ACRA), Washington DC

Arlington, Virginia, October 23, 2023

DAMAGE ID attended the ACRA trade association “bootcamp” on October 23-25, 2023. It was an exciting and intense 3 days, filled with networking and advocacy for interests of the car rental industry via ACRAPAC, the political action committee, associated with ACRA.

ACRA represents 98% of America’s car rental industry, and is comprised of 300+ car rental companies including larger brands such as Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar and Enterprise. In addition, there were many smaller companies in attendance such as Edge Rental from New York and AMPM Rental from Los Angelos.

Charlie partner and software engineer from DAMAGE iD in front front of the US Capitol building, before meeting with senators.

The first day included “inside” industry learning, via panel discussions, held at the Westin in Arlington. Panel presentations included:

  • Fleet management
  • Legal Issues for Car Rental Industry
  • Third Party Fleet Services
  • Insurance Procurement
  • Damage Recovery and Fleet Financing
  • Electric Vehicle Transition

Charlie Dalsass, partner and software engineer from DAMAGE iD, presented on the panel on damage recovery. Mr. Dalsass emphasized the importance of digital “baseline” photo and video capture as a way to improve profitability when collecting for damage. Mr. Dalsass also discussed the state of DAMAGE iD’s AI-based damage detection as well as the advances and challenges in that area.

Day 2 and 3, were held at capitol hill in DC, meeting with senators and congress members to advocate for issues relevant to the car rental industry. Topics included:

  • Politics and Policy “Full Expensing” (Tax)
  • 2023 FAA Bill and Airport Electrification
  • Vehicle Data access
  • Federal Cyber Security and Law enforcement issues
  • EV Perspectives

At the reception on Tuesday, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) gave speeches supporting the car rental industry.

Charlie with Ian from Empire Rent-a-Car (New York, New York)

Carlos, Gregg, Charlie and Al in front of capitol building offices.

Mike DeLorenzo, NP Franchise Group, in front of Sen Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) office
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) speaking about the importance of the car rental service industry and tourism.
Congressional reception at Sonoma Restaurant

The event was a great way to meet and work closely with customers, as well as learn about the political process. DAMAGE iD hopes to attend again in 2024… until then!

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Tech Tip #2: How to Increase or Decrease Photo Brightness (Exposure)

We believe there is no better software for finding and proving damage than DAMAGE iD.

However, you must take great photos in order to get an accurate, detailed digital record of your vehicles’ condition.

To make taking great photos easier for you, in Android 3.7 (r54), we’ve added an exposure slider.

Don’t take photos that look like this! Overexposed photo on the right. In bright sunlight, on certain devices, you can get this problem. Correct photo exposure is shown on the left.

Now when taking photos, just click the “sun” icon. See below!

Click the “sun” to adjust your camera’s exposure using the slider as shown above.

You are never going to find or prove vehicle damage if your photos are “washed out” or “over-exposed” like the above photo.

Use the exposure icon (“the sun” icon) to prevent bad photos.

Be sure to upgrade to the latest Android version, and that you are running 3.7 (r54) to get the new slider.

Best of luck taking great photos with DAMAGE iD!

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Tech Tip: How to Sort Vehicles by Numerical Unit Number

Unit numbers in DAMAGE iD can contain either numbers or letters (or a mixture of the two).

Some customers mix numbers and letters in vehicle Unit Number. Some use only numbers, e.g. 0-9.

When sorting vehicles by Unit Number, the order can be somewhat unexpected for users who use only numbers.

For example, the default Vehicle sorting will order the vehicles like this:

1111, 2

Because alphabetically, “1111” comes before “2” – even though “1111” is bigger than “2”.

If you prefer to sort the vehicles like this:

2, 1111

Select the option “All Unit Numbers are numeric”.

This will sort your vehicles in the way you expect it within the Case List and the Vehicles List (click the table heading to sort by any field).

After changing the setting, the following sorting will be used.

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How to Bulk Archive and Delete Vehicles in the Review Portal

We’ve just added a new capability in the Vehicles (Cars) section of the Review Portal.

You can now modify up to 50 vehicles at one time. This works for the following bulk actions:

  • Delete
  • Activate
  • Archive
  • De-Activate

And you can select up to 50 vehicles with a single click. See below:

In addition, we’ve added a new field “Date Created“.

(The Date Created will be blank for existing vehicles, but will be filled when new vehicles are created).

Click ‘DATE CREATED‘ column in the Vehicles list to order vehicles by this date. (Click again to reverse order).

This should be a big time-saver for customers such as auto dealerships or automotive repair shops who delete vehicles after a short period of time.


Hopefully you will make use of this great new feature!

A-Team Support Staff

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Get in “Sync” with 2 Powerful New Settings

We’ve just added 2 new settings in DAMAGE iD Android 3.7.

(Be sure to Upgrade your DAMAGE iD Version if you aren’t already on 3.7).

The 2 new options are “Sync media over Wi-Fi only” and “Photo Compression”.

Here’s what they look like:

Sync media over Wi-Fi only is used to conserve your mobile data connection while you are on the road or rental lot.

Enabling Sync media over Wi-Fi allows you to take all your photos but not sync any photos/videos until you reach Wi-Fi. When you return to Wi-Fi (office, home, coffee-shop) then DAMAGE iD will begin its uploading.

Here’s the background:

DAMAGE iD uses a small amount of “network” in order to keep the cases in sync. This network use keeps order – making sure case numbers are in proper sequence on the Review Portal.

After photos/video are taken, the media sync/upload process within DAMAGE iD starts up. In this sync/upload process, DAMAGE iD copies the images from your phone to Cloud storage. This can use a lot of bandwidth. (Here’s a simple calculation: 5 megabytes per photo or video X 12 photos X 2 for before and after photos. That can max up to 120 megabytes of data per case!).

Enable Sync media over Wi-Fi … and no more expensive mobile data bills!

Photo Compression allows you to control compression vs image quality.

We recommend you capture the highest quality (least compressed) photos you able to.

However, there are times when these photos are just too large and bulky and the extra size is unnecessary or barely noticeable.

Options are “None”, “75%”, “60%”, “50%” and “25%”.

75% compression will reduce image quality and size a little.

25% will reduce quality and image size the most.

We look forward to hearing your feedback on the new settings.

ps. We are also working on improving the speed of downloads within the Review Portal next. The new release will greatly increase the download speed of these images without requiring any reduction in photo quality. Look for a major Review Portal release announcement coming soon!


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How to Enable Numeric or Alpha Keyboard on Unit Number (Android)

UPDATED Summer 2020: As of Android version 3.6, the Alpha or Numeric keyboard setting is now found within the Settings area of the app. Click the “Setting Gear” ⚙ icon to reveal this setting.

For versions prior to 3.6, to enable numeric (or alpha) keyboard input into the VIN/Unit Number field on Android, CLICK THE LOGO on that screen.

This will enable a settings screen, which allows you to toggle the setting.

After version 3.6 we use a more conventional “Setting Gear” ⚙ icon which you can click to reveal this setting.