REVISED AND EXPANDED
This is the case where someone reverses a vehicle into your bike at the supermarket or parked beside the road, or something like that. Personal injury cases require a lawyer from the beginning, so this isn't legal advice, it's cycling advice about dealing with people presumed to be crooks from the get-go, insurance assessors.
Personally, I would simply claim for a new bike with all the same components, then let the insurance company argue about the present value of a secondhand bike. That way, if you stick to your guns and don't become too agreeable, you may not to lose too much money. This business about being agreeable is important; insurance companies count on victims of accidents being decent to boost their profits.
To play into the insurance company's hands by specifying damage simply as components you will replace yourself is to invite them to argue and impose their own values on you and to cost you immense frustration and in the end real money.
An argument that insurance companies understand is that to bring the bike back up to its condition before their client reversed into you will cost more than it is worth.
The cost is:
*The obviously broken components, when you determine what they are (you haven't yet)
*Components that are suspect because of the crash -- if you don't feel secure on your bike it is a total write-off
*Your time to strip the entire bike
*Time spent finding a magnafluxer with facilities big enough to handle a bike frame, to assure the integrity of the frame
*Ditto for critical components, which may be a different magnafluxer
*Time cleaning the frame of residual magnafluxing materials, a nasty job requiring leather gloves and eye shielding (all these extra costs mount up)
*Time you spend finding and arranging repainting -- especially on a steel bike, every smallest scratch has to be fixed, and soon
*Packing material costs -- a solid wooden box may be good just enough for your bike
*Time to pack the bike properly, several times (magna fluxing, repainting)
*Time to arrange and wait for couriers, several time (magna flux, repainting, there and back)
*The cost of repainting
*Repainter's labour cost of unpacking and repacking a thoroughly stripped frame
*Time spent unpacking the frame (several times, itemize each)
*The cost of disposing of the packing afterwards
*The time spent reassembling the components on the bike
*The opportunity cost of this upset to your health: the total time you didn't have your bike is charged at the rental rate for such a pricey bike, not the mickey mouse cost of a low-grade mountain bike
*Time for unforeseeable holdups, such as there are plenty in any bike assembly, especially after being crashed into by a Land Rover
*An allowance for further components found to be damaged or insecure over time, as happens to fragile bicycle parts designed for ultra-low weight
Calculate your time generously -- to yourself -- and charge at least £50 per hour.
Mark your list "Preliminary estimate. E&O excepted." to imply that it can be enlarged when you discover another cost foisted on you by their driver crashing into you.
If your bike is a Thorn, you will of course want it sent to Thorn HQ to be evaluated, stripped, sent for repainting, reassembled, tested and returned to you as new. (Thanks, Pavel!) That's four courier charges right there..., plus a fair deal of labour, plus parts that at retail are always more expensive than as OEM fitments on a new bike, plus your packing, unpacking time. plus the cost of the packing materials, plus the cost and time to dispose of the packing materials.
Alternatively, say that the insurance company can take the broken bike away and fix it to your full satisfaction as a secure vehicle, and if not, you will expect them to replace it; mention that the frame must have a magnaflux certificate (or a letter from Robin Thorn saying the frame won't fail) to attest to its integrity or you will reject it. Don't bother being "reasonable"; that's their game, and they'll use it to screw you.
Mention that you went to school with several journalists for national tabloids who're always looking for a juicy story of the big guys ripping the little guy, and that your brother-in-law is a lawyer who does a lot of work for the citizen's advice bureau (in the States "pro bono").
All of this should add up to much more than a new bike. You don't care whether the insurance company reels in incredulity or horror; you just need to make a case that these are your losses and one way or another you will get recompense. The point is to make them beg to buy you a new bike instead of this open-ended, expensive mess you're opening up.
Explain that in the Tour de France, "which surely you've seen on television", they throw bikes away when the slightest thing goes wrong with them because the integrity of the entire bike then becomes suspect.
The whole idea of all this is to shortcut all the hassle and uncertainty and simply to get cash for a new bike, or a long way towards it. When that is settled, you can ask the insurance man to take the "dangerous" old bike away -- he won't want to (because he'll have to pay to dispose of it), and you can keep it for spare parts.
Me, I'd add that I want to be recompensed for my now-shattered emotional attachment to my bike. I'd collect too, but for the British it might be a step too far into French emotionalism.
© Andre Jute 2017
