Author Topic: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance  (Read 4837 times)

Wowbagger

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Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« on: 26 August, 2015, 03:47:06 pm »
It is That Time of Year again and I have been asked by Saga for £671.63 to renew my home insurance. This is A Lot. What makes it worse is that the breakdown is as follows:

Buildings up to £1m: 177.02

Contents up to £50k with accidental damage: 158.02

Unspecified personal belongings: 89.75

3 bicycles, total value £7575 (Thorn tandem & two Thorn Raven Sports Tours): 219.84

Legal expenses cover: 27.00

Does anyone else get better value on the insurance of individual bikes? It seems to me that insuring £7000's worth of bikes costing a lot more than £50k's worth of contents is rather cockeyed. Who else insures individual bikes to that sort of value, and what do they charge?

Over to the panel.
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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #1 on: 26 August, 2015, 03:49:39 pm »
Peadlcover? Actually bike insurance that includes contents insurance. You may need additional buildings insurance, I haven't checked that far.

http://pedalcover.co.uk/insurance/combined-bike-and-home-insurance/
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #2 on: 26 August, 2015, 03:50:36 pm »
M&S charge me about £70-£80 to have my Thorn Nomad with a replacement cost of approx £3.5k listed as an individual bike.
Not fast & rarely furious

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #3 on: 26 August, 2015, 03:51:53 pm »
It seems to me that insuring £7000's worth of bikes costing a lot more than £50k's worth of contents is rather cockeyed.

Theft of cycles is higher, proportionately, than theft from houses. Value of individual thefts is lower. Risk = cost.
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

RichForrest

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #4 on: 26 August, 2015, 04:00:09 pm »
We are with Swinton from £20 to £32 a month more when we added all our bikes on.
Each bike is insured at replacement value which works out about the same as yours in total.

Wowbagger

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #5 on: 26 August, 2015, 04:07:15 pm »
M&S charge me about £70-£80 to have my Thorn Nomad with a replacement cost of approx £3.5k listed as an individual bike.

I just did an online quote with M & S - the annual premium for like with like (contents & buildings) was over a grand! It must be my postcode. Southend is clearly dodgier than Liverpool. :thumbsup:

I think I am just going to pay this. Bugger.
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.

Wombat

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #6 on: 26 August, 2015, 05:23:13 pm »
May be worth checking with NFU mutual, ours are covered with them, and whilst I can't recall the exact details, and ours aren't worth what yours are, they seemed pretty realistic about it all, and it wasn't so restrictive about it not being covered unless its locked to something weighing as much as a planet by a lock that weighs 50 times the weight of the cycle.  They also cover my model steam engines, which ARE worth as much as your bikes, and actually cover them whilst they're in the back of my car (which the car insurance certainly doesn't).  The only restriction on that is that I'm not supposed to take out more than £5k worth of them in the car at once.


(edited to remove embarrassing typo)
Wombat

Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #7 on: 26 August, 2015, 07:11:49 pm »
This year we went with Hiscox. They include "unlimited cover for bikes at home and £3,500 per bike while away from home providing it's locked to a fixed structure or within a locked building".

Though, this is limited by "We provide £10,000 of cover for theft from sheds, garages, barns and stables, subject to the exclusions in the policy documents."

Wowbagger

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #8 on: 26 August, 2015, 07:20:04 pm »
The deed is done for another year. I was really quite surprised at how much I would have had to pay other insurance companies. M & S, for example. may be doing a great deal for Andrew C and his lovely bike, but otherwise they were a lot more expensive. I also did an on-line thingy through whoever the insurers are that British Cycling use and they would have charged me over £400 for £7500's worth of bikes.

Endsleigh, who have always specialised in student insurance (I believe they actually belonged to the NUS at one time, like when I was a student) told me they only insure bikes up to a value of £1500.
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rogerzilla

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #9 on: 26 August, 2015, 07:29:54 pm »
Many insurers cover bikes as part of the normal premium, provided they are in the house or outbuildings.  It's when they're elsewhere that the problems start.  Nationwide covers them as long as they're locked to something, or did when I took out my cover.
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

David Martin

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #10 on: 26 August, 2015, 07:42:50 pm »
I'd put the premium into a savings account and accept the risk. Then you have a no-quibble insurer who will also buy you a nice bike when you feel like it.
If you work out the odds, at worst the insurer reckons on 30+ years before your bikes are stolen to that value.

It is one of those things - if you could live without it and the cost is not so high that you don't buy it outright, then self insure.
"By creating we think. By living we learn" - Patrick Geddes

Wowbagger

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #11 on: 26 August, 2015, 08:11:23 pm »
It's an interesting thought. In a little over 3 weeks I will have had my Thorn for 9 years. I have done almost 33000 miles on it and it has given me almost no trouble. If I had put away £70 a month for the duration I would still be only 1/3 of the way towards paying for a replacement. I will have to ride the damned thing until I am 79 to save up for a replacement like that!
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.

Si_Co

Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #12 on: 26 August, 2015, 08:29:57 pm »
Something wrong there Wow methinks, makes the Thorn worth over 22 grand  :o

Jakob

Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #13 on: 26 August, 2015, 08:50:22 pm »
My home insurance policy would only cover up to £500 without any additional charge,,and it was a lot after that.
I did however, insure it through my British Cycling membership,,can't remember the cost, but it was cheap!

Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #14 on: 26 August, 2015, 08:57:46 pm »
My AXA policy costs me £21 a month and covers building and contents with pedal cycles as named valuables.  I put 4 of them on there with a combined value of about £8k.  So it looks as if covering them as valuables puts about nothing on the premium.  I've been  with them for many years because my insurance broker did the leg work for me and found this policy.  I've never claimed so I have no idea how good they might or might not be. 

Cycle specific policies are of no use at all when they demand special locks and securing in solid buildings with time lock operated vaults and then they charge typically 10% of the machine's cost as a premium.

TimC

  • Old blerk sometimes onabike.
Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #15 on: 27 August, 2015, 06:30:07 am »
It's an interesting thought. In a little over 3 weeks I will have had my Thorn for 9 years. I have done almost 33000 miles on it and it has given me almost no trouble. If I had put away £70 a month for the duration I would still be only 1/3 of the way towards paying for a replacement. I will have to ride the damned thing until I am 79 to save up for a replacement like that!

Put the £70/month in my account, Wowsa. I'll guarantee you a new Thorn every 27 years - and buy myself a couple of Colnagos with the profit I'd make! ;D

Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #16 on: 28 August, 2015, 08:53:44 am »
I sincerely am not recommending a firm that will push up renewals every time if they can, but Admiral home insurance is worth consideration. I have their Premier policy, with higher contents including accidental damage, in a London postcode, with £5K of bikes and pay less.

Whether this is connected to the no-claims history I don't know; as a rule I refrain from claiming for "minor" items on the basis that the insurance is there for when I need it, so have not claimed for .... ever?

contango

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #17 on: 29 August, 2015, 01:15:20 am »
It is That Time of Year again and I have been asked by Saga for £671.63 to renew my home insurance. This is A Lot. What makes it worse is that the breakdown is as follows:

Buildings up to £1m: 177.02

Do you need 1m worth of buildings cover? When I lived in London the market value of my house was somewhere between 5-600k but the rebuild cost was closer to 200k.

Quote
Contents up to £50k with accidental damage: 158.02

I guess the thing to do is check the cover you need here, whether you need accidental damage cover and the total value. Especially given...

Quote
Unspecified personal belongings: 89.75

How does this differ from the contents?

Quote
3 bicycles, total value £7575 (Thorn tandem & two Thorn Raven Sports Tours): 219.84

That seems a lot to cover bicycles, I'd be checking to see if you have bicycle cover anyway within the policy. If the individual bikes are over policy limits you may be stuck with this. I vaguely recall my policy (with Hiscox) covered bicycles up to a proportion of the total insured value. My bikes weren't anywhere near as valuable as yours (the three bikes my wife and I had would have cost about 2500 in total to replace).

Quote
Does anyone else get better value on the insurance of individual bikes? It seems to me that insuring £7000's worth of bikes costing a lot more than £50k's worth of contents is rather cockeyed. Who else insures individual bikes to that sort of value, and what do they charge?

It does seem a bit cockeyed. When I was with Hiscox their premiums weren't cheap (my last annual premium was a little less than double yours) but they offered the cover I needed at a much lower price than anyone else I spoke to. I'd rather not go into detail on a public board but I had a few particularly high value items that needed insuring, which meant the total value of my contents were higher than most high street insurers would cover at all.

I never had to make a claim with Hiscox so can't comment on how well they did there. They offer a monthly payment option at no extra charge. The only problem I had with them was when I moved out of my house and into a friend's house while mine was refurbished, and due to a misunderstanding I very nearly ended up with no insurance at all. It turned out they thought I was moving out of the house while leaving all my valuable items in the house, and when they realised that the valuables weren't in the empty house they reinstated everything and waived the last month's premium as a goodwill gesture. The only reason I'm not still with Hiscox is because I left the country and they don't offer landlord insurance.

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hellymedic

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #18 on: 29 August, 2015, 01:21:52 am »
I'd put the premium into a savings account and accept the risk. Then you have a no-quibble insurer who will also buy you a nice bike when you feel like it.
If you work out the odds, at worst the insurer reckons on 30+ years before your bikes are stolen to that value.

It is one of those things - if you could live without it and the cost is not so high that you don't buy it outright, then self insure.

Precisely what I did.
Called it the 'Helen Vecht New Bike Slush Fund'...

Rhys W

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #19 on: 29 August, 2015, 10:21:01 pm »
Peadlcover? Actually bike insurance that includes contents insurance. You may need additional buildings insurance, I haven't checked that far.

http://pedalcover.co.uk/insurance/combined-bike-and-home-insurance/

I went with Pedalcover a few months ago - they have a good reputation locally so I thought they'd be worth a call. I now have my buildings, contents and bikes insured with them, saving me about £500 a year in total. The cover, especially for the bikes is much better than what I had (new for old etc). I've heard they're basically AXA, which is what M & S were a few years ago when they had a great reputation for bike cover as part of home contents insurance.

Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #20 on: 30 August, 2015, 03:17:00 pm »
I haven't looked at this for a while (reminds me, must check that our cover is still adequate). However, I have generally found this.

Cycle-specific policies, including cycle-specific additions to home insurance, fall down for keen riders with multiple bikes. Although there is a risk of theft from the home, it's logically no greater than for other valuables stored similarly. Therefore, the key point is the additional risk of theft (etc.) while out and about.

However, few of us are able to ride (=take away from relatively secure storage) more than one of our valuable steeds at the same time. Therefore, policies that just charge you per £10 of value simply don't work for anyone with several bikes.

I've always preferred home policies that let you list bikes alongside other special valuables, and have a general provision that up to £10k (or some other sum that you choose) can be off the premises at any one time and still covered. That lets you take your best bike and a suitcase of other stuff away from home, without having to insure the whole fleet as though you were some kind of weird trick cyclist using them all at once.

Home policies taking this approach are in the minority, but they can be found.

Mrs Pingu

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #21 on: 12 July, 2019, 05:40:47 pm »
Thread resurrection I know, but thanks to threads like this it appears we'll be able to reduce our insurance from £590 with m&s to £330 with pedalcover and that's with better bike coverage and adding on 2 pieces of art.
 :thumbsup:
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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #22 on: 13 July, 2019, 03:38:14 pm »
Yep, Pedalcover do provide a good deal. There was a thread on Bikeradar where they got criticised when a bike theft didn’t result in a payout, but that was down to clever nitpicking by the underwriter. The stolen bikes were locked to other bikes that were locked to a tree, so were considered “not secured to an immovable object”. Of course they’d still have been stolen had they been locked to the tree, but underwriters can ignore that.
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

Kim

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Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #23 on: 13 July, 2019, 04:28:05 pm »
An immovable object presumably being one that can only be moved by application of an unstoppable force...

Re: Insuring bikes as part of home insurance
« Reply #24 on: 13 July, 2019, 04:41:54 pm »
Yep, Pedalcover do provide a good deal. There was a thread on Bikeradar where they got criticised when a bike theft didn’t result in a payout, but that was down to clever nitpicking by the underwriter. The stolen bikes were locked to other bikes that were locked to a tree, so were considered “not secured to an immovable object”. Of course they’d still have been stolen had they been locked to the tree, but underwriters can ignore that.

Were the other bikes also stolen? I kind of imagined the interpretation of that clause would be down to whether the thing they were locked to was also stolen, but I apparently have too cuddly an image of insurance underwriters.