After an accident, what is Diminished Value and why you should be concerned

(information provided by Collision Safety Consultants)

This will help you understand diminished value better.

Bottom line, if you are in an accident and you car is repaired, it is now worth less than prior to the accident and you should be compensated for that decrease in value.

Inherent Diminished Value:

The automatic loss in the vehicle market value from an accident and repair. A wrecked and repaired vehicle is worth less than a vehicle that has no wreck history. This is based on public awareness of such things as car fax, Auto Check , Title searching, and insurance reporting agencies. The simple fact that even if a vehicle is repaired to the best of human ability, it will still exhibit remaining deficiencies and inconsistencies from the pre-loss condition of the vehicle. These deficiencies include, but are not limited to:

• Weaker structural components that appear cosmetically sound
• Impossible to duplicate factory seams, sealers, and finishes
• Telltale signs of repair, such as paint missing off the heads of bolts
• The unavailability of some factory decals, and markings
• Undiscovered Kinetic damage throughout the vehicle
• The increased likelihood of a mechanical failure
• The effect that the repair will have on the future deployment of the SRS systems
• The impossibility of duplicating immersion rust-proofing techniques, etc.