Bicycles and pedelecs become more and more the target of spontaneous or organized crime, which means that not only many private individuals, but also retailers and manufacturers are increasingly affected by thefts and burglaries. In accordance with the typical terms and conditions of the insurers, a fair settlement requires a bicycle or pedelec of the same type and quality as indemnity at the amount of the value as new.
Due to a lack of higher level bicycle and pedelec registration, there are no official documents or sources to identify stolen bicycles/pedelecs and/or components. Many manufacturers do not keep a record of frame numbers. Bicycle retailer invoices are often cryptical, technical terms or type designations are not conclusive for non-professionals.
Comprehensive market overview
More than 400 bicycle brands with partly up to 250 models, annual model changes and the possibility of making considerable changes on the bicycles and pedelecs during their service life are a real challenge, if you want to keep track of all developments on the market. In such cases we can provide support on the basis of handed in documents and photos of the stolen bicycle/pedelec and/or component by means of our extensive market archive. The latter contains catalogues and technical specifications with regard to nearly all bicycles and components which have been offered in the past 30 years. A built-up archive comprising bicycles from department stores and DIY markets of the past 20 years counts more than 15,000 record sets and allows for an estimate of these bicycles that were sold a million times. For a thorough assessment our services also comprise enquiries as to the frame numbers of the relevant manufacturers in our database set up over the years. With this comprehensive “memory of the cycle industry” we are in a position to describe and assess the specs and price of virtually every bicycle still in use in these days.
Focus on considerable losses
The experts of GDFS draw up expert’s reports on the settlement of burglary damage and theft of bicycles and pedelecs incl. accessories at a value as new of more than 2000 Euro. Expert’s reports for less expensive products are drawn up, in case of an insufficient plausibility of the incident of loss or if there are insufficient grounds for the claim for damages.