gilpi

Prices on some of the bikes listed don't even cover the actual total price of the components alone!

jefnvk

I'd have gone to some local bike shops and gotten them to write up estimates on replacement valuation. Not a single one of my bikes is even listed in BBB, and one is only a year old, and most are worth more than the <$100 that they would be if they were on the site in accessories alone.

elocs

This reminds me of a time more than 30 years ago when I took a bunch of my vintage rock albums to sell at the record shop and they said they would give me a buck apiece for them. I told them I'd rather give them away to people I knew would want them.

I paid $800 for my Easy Racer EZ Sport back in 2001 and it still serves me well to this day but BBB shows it only being worth $150. Recently when it was in the shop for a couple of weeks I looked on CL for a backup for it and found a guy nearby who was selling one like mine, same year but different color. He is a collector of recumbents and this one had been sitting around for awhile.
He even brought the bike to my house for me to check it out since I don't have a car and we got to talking. The bike was actually in better shape than mine because it had not been ridden that much.
He had a sticker on it where it looked like he had tried to sell it at a yard sale so I offered him $150 for it and he said, "no, I'll take $130 for it". We talked more and it turned out we knew a lot of different people in common, even one of my best friends growing up. But he said he wanted to see the bike go to somebody he knew would appreciate it and use it. Two days later he even brought over a new Schwalbe front tire for it and a mirror as well.
So he had his bike priced near what BBB had said it was worth even if he didn't know it, but he had priced it on his own.

Tape2012

If your insurance covers replacement cost, your best bet is to keep all your receipts for your bike and accessories. That will set the max figure that insurance will cover to replace. Fortunately I paid for that coverage so my insurance paid out the blue book value immediately and then reimbursed the rest once I replaced the bike. If I had not purchased that coverage, I would have gotten the blue book only.

Don't expect your adjuster to know anything about bikes or to care about accessories unless you have documentation and a thorough police report. Pictures help a lot too.

twodownzero

I was thinking $400, but maybe a little more than that if it's absolutely pristine. A Trek 1.5 was never a high end bike to begin with.

SimcoeAce

Not in this case. The bike was $4,000 new in 2012, listed at on EBay at $1,200 which was about $200 less than BBB value (plus free shipping). I'm not sure that I saw another bike listed at significantly less than the BBB value ... so I bought it. It was a bike that seemed to make sense for me anyway, but relative to other valuations in BBB, it seemed like a "good deal". However, it had no other takers at the "Buy It Now" price for a couple of weeks, so in what sense is it really a "good deal"? Either way, personally, I am very happy with my purchase.

I don't understand why low-balling bikes on BBB would help bike stores in any way - it might help them take in used bikes at a lower price, but at the same time it's going to make it harder for them to re-sell at a decent price.

I am also wondering if higher end bikes depreciate more substantially, for the reason that people looking to buy high performance bikes, especially for racing, are more likely to be looking for the "latest thing" rather than an older model.

Harhir

I use BBB just to get a guidance on the original MSRP. I like to know if that once was a $500 bike or a $5,000 bike. Other than that their values on used bikes are not very useful and neither realistic. They don't take into account components used or frame size or geographical area or rarity... They just seem to use a simple algorithm to calculate the depreciation.
At the end it always depends what someone is willing to pay for the bike. Everyone has different needs. I myself am a tall guy. And I am ok to pay more if I find a bike which fits exactly my personal needs.

mstateglfr 

What insurance company do you use? I just want to know so I never consider switching to them. An insurance company using a totally baseless website to determine replacement value?!? wild.

Tape2012

So you really expect that your adjuster, who likely knows nothing about bikes, is going to do a lot of market research to determine the value of your bike? Not going to happen. A statement from your local bike shop estimating value won't carry much weight without data to back it up. Even if the shop had the data they are not going to give it to you.

As I said already, pay for replacement coverage, keep all your receipts, take pics, and fill out the police report thoroughly. Otherwise, it's probably cheaper to write off the bike.

mstateglfr 

I don't expect all that you just listed. That is all just you're assuming based on my comment. What I do expect is for my insurance company to not just Google the bike and then believe a random website. That would be absurd

Tape2012

My adjuster knew nothing about bikes but she knew about the BBB site. The only point of negotiation was exactly what year /model my bike was since I bought it used on CL. not sure what else you would expect your adjuster to do.

jefnvk

Thing is, you just stated your insurance company took the value from a random website which doesn't use or offer any data to back up its valuations. How is that really any different, other than it coming from some unknown entity who made a website for bicycles that uses naming and styling similar to a respected site for car values?

02Giant 

IIRC, you once claimed their values were "wildly overvalued". How absurd is that If you are on the receiving end from the insurance company?

mstateglfr 

Perhaps I made that comment with regard to a specific listing. I would say that my view now is the same as it has been, and that is the website is baseless. I have seen some listings that I think are overpriced, sure, but I would say most are undervalued. The website seems to seriously depreciate bikes even though I would not consider them that cheap. This is especially true for older model bicycles where I think the real world places a floor price and Bicycle Blue Book continues to devalue the price past the floor. Hopefully this year explanation clarifies any confusion and further clarifies my position.
Respectfully yours, M State Glfr

Tape2012

Argue that with your insurance company and let us know how that turns out. You can complain all you want about how it doesn't make sense, I just related how it worked out in my situation. Your just attacking the messenger.

Tape2012

The bicycle blue book site claims that they have a database of thousands of bicycle transactions going back to 1993 and that all of the bicycles in the database have been professionally serviced.

To me that implies they are getting their data from bike shop transactions. But that is only a guess.

jefnvk

Last time I dealt with an adjuster (in relation to a car claim), I corrected some of the assumptions they had made about the vehicle, and argued some of their "comparable" valuations. In the end, I got about $500 more out of it than I would have had I just taken their numbers, and I really put no actual effort into getting even that out of them.

I'm glad to hear you got more at a later time, I just feel that corroborates my belief that they would have listened to something other than BBB, had you presented it.

mstateglfr 

Last time I had to work with an adjuster, it was on a car that was totaled. He was trying to pay out way less than what the car was worth in replacement value.
It was an older year but with incredibly low miles and the comps he pulled and shared were nothing at all like the car that was totaled. As a result, I pushed back with actual real information and examples of comparable vehicles(not same model, but same style vehicle with same general amenities and similar miles. I received thousands more as a result of not arguing, but showing why the comparables were wrong.


BBB doesnt even list comparables. It is useless as it doesnt take into account used pricing for bikes on the extreme ends(which are often seen as cheap because nobody wants them, but are often expensive because inventory is so scarce for those who want them). It doesnt take into account location. It doesnt take into account time of year.
All those things factor greatly in a bike's cost.
Lets not even begin to address the issue of if BBB is to be followed, what happens when a bike isnt listed at all?

I know how much it cost to build up each of my bikes. None are in the BBB database, i am positive. Whats funny is that all would cost more to replace than what BBB values many bikes that are newer and have higher level componentry.

Tape2012

You take a risk when building your own bikes, just like if you built your own car. You'll want to address that with your insurance beforehand and make sure you have the correct coverage, keep thorough documentation, good pics, and a thorough police report if the bike is destroyed or stolen.

I'm pretty sure that people with highly customized cars rarely get their money back when selling or from insurance unless you insure it for a given amount and pay the required premium.

You can argue that the BBB is useless, I'm just relating what happened in my case. Without the correct coverage I would have been screwed and wouldn't have bothered submitting a claim. But with the correct coverage, I was able to recover $1600 for a bike that I paid $450 on CL. Take it up with your insurance.

zebede

Bike Blue Book, unlike Kelly Blue Book, is not based upon market values. Kelly Blue Book has MILLIONS of data points from used car sales, loan values, insured value. There is an industry which is built on the data (banks and insurance) and it is updated daily.

Bike Blue Book has ZERO data points and is basically a genius way of generating traffic to there store. As pointed out above it is just an overly simple formula that has no source of data. They buy low and sell high.

As a used bike market participant, I concur with the above observations that the values in the Bike Bluebook are not the value seen in the marketplace. Its strictly click bait. The owners of the sight could care less if the values are real or not. They want to appear as legitimate as possible to drive internet traffic to there store.

They buy bikes at these low prices and sell them for higher on Ebay. They are making the values up in order to increase there profit!

Tape2012

My understanding is that BBB has relationships with bike shops/stores who report their sales data. Do you have any evidence for your claims?

Also, the auto market is much larger, more fluid and easier to track so you would expect their data to be more accurate.

All I can tell you is that, in my experience, insurance companies use BBB data in making decisions on bike values. You might not agree, but they do.

HerrKaLeun

The difference to cars is that the LBS only sell a small fraction of the market and have no motivation to report all transactions, or be accurate about those. Just look at this forum how many people report about purchases or sales on CL/ebay or ask advice about CL for sales. I can't recall a single thread about someone asking about an LBS used bike sale.

For cars the government has 100% of the sales recorded (due to titles) and in states with sales tax there also is a huge motivation to enforce honest transaction prices.

Bicycles also have no odometer, while mileage on cars is an important part of the price.

I think the only thing in common between KBB and BBB is that two words match.

jefnvk

Not to mention, with the advent of no-haggle blue book trade in from BBB participating dealers, do they really have an incentive to make sure prices that are more often than not lower than market value are raised?

bicycle trade in program

Tape2012

I don't disagree with you on those points. CL is not useful either because you only see what people are asking for their bikes, you have no idea what the final sales price was, other than to assume it was lower than asking. That alone likely explains much of the gap between what people see on CL and BBB.

My only two points were that I don't believe (unless you have evidence) that BBB just pulls numbers out of their arse and that insurance companies DO use BBB to help determine market value. Trust me, an insurance adjuster is not going to spend time cruising CL just because you don't like what BBB is saying.

You could take out a separate rider on your homeowners insurance to guarantee a predetermined payout but that costs money as well and I bet most people don't do it.

mstateglfr 

I would actually laugh if my insurance tried to use bbb. That site isnt some insurance database.
Its no different than if i were to log onto ebay and find the 5 most expensive bikes that are vaguely similar to the one im claiming.

Both have no reason to be in an insurance claim.