The improved offer
Shortly after receiving the report, the insurer comes back with a higher residual value bid. If your vehicle has already been sold, that bid is irrelevant.
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In a total loss a single figure decides how much reaches you: the residual value. The higher it is set, the less the insurer pays. Small wonder that this item is fought over particularly hard.
In an economic total loss the repair costs exceed the replacement value. What is then reimbursed is not the repair but the difference: replacement value less residual value.
An example: the replacement value is €12,000 and the residual value €3,500 – you receive €8,500 and keep the vehicle. If the insurer instead puts the residual value at €5,500, only €6,500 remains. Two figures, two thousand euros apart.
So it is worth looking closely at how the residual value came about.
The German Federal Court of Justice has held repeatedly that injured parties may rely on the residual value an appraiser has established on the general regional market.
In concrete terms: you do not have to sell your vehicle to a buyer at the other end of the country merely because the insurer arranged a higher bid there. Three offers from regional dealers, properly documented in the report, are the robust benchmark.
The timing matters: do not sell anything before the report exists. Selling in haste removes the basis for any discussion.
Shortly after receiving the report, the insurer comes back with a higher residual value bid. If your vehicle has already been sold, that bid is irrelevant.
Bids from salvage exchanges often come from buyers hundreds of kilometres away. They do not reflect your regional market.
Where the repair costs are up to 30 per cent above the replacement value you may still repair – and must then keep the car for six months.
Have the vehicle appraised before you deregister it, dispose of it or trade it in. The report states the replacement value, the residual value and the offers underlying them – and with that your position is documented.
If a higher bid then arrives, we examine together whether it counts at all: does it come from a dealer you can actually reach? Is it binding and still valid? Does it include collection and deregistration? In many cases the bid falls apart on closer inspection.
Please note: Where the settlement is disputed, a solicitor specialising in German road traffic law should be brought in – and where the collision was not your fault, the other side's liability insurer bears those costs too.
Three offers from the region, properly documented – the basis on which inflated residual values do not survive.
Head office in Schramberg-Sulgen, branch office in Rottweil. For the damage inspection we come to you in any case – on site, at the workshop or at your home.
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