Pedalcover insurance & flats - a cautionary tale

[Mrs Pingu]

Depends if it's a single item hit or a whole pile of items too.

[fd3]

I was prompted to swivel round on my chair and get our House Insurance file out - it's a 4 bed, detached house - unlimited contents premium is £72 for this year - that includes bicycles to the value of £10,000* with £5,000 of that for unspecified bikes at not more than £500 each & the remainder for 3 specified bikes (total value stated at £5,000) with a £250 excess. There are no stupid "solid-gold-weighs 50kg " lock requirements when not at home.

Well go and be useful and tell us who that's with then?

Yeah, I would like to know too.   Urgently shopping for new home insurance that will cover my wife’s new e-bike and cover the laid backs for theft from home.

[Paul H]

That’s not an option with a theft, which is why most people have insurance.

Here's what the policy says:

2. Proof of value and ownership
You are responsible for proving any loss. So, to help with your
claim, we recommend that you keep receipts, valuations,
photographs, instruction booklets and guarantee cards.

I have no problem with that, I don't keep meticulous records, some of my bikes are twenty years old and have gone through various changes, I'd still have no problem providing proof of value and ownership. 

[robgul]

The real question here seems to be why the hell are you using Pedalcover - the mainstream buildings/contents insurers for the most part will include/add bikes at very little extra cost.

I'm with Pedalcover because when M&S Insurance stopped doing decent cover for bikes that's who many people on this very forum were recommending at the time, and I've not bothered shopping around since then.

I was prompted to swivel round on my chair and get our House Insurance file out - it's a 4 bed, detached house - unlimited contents premium is £72 for this year - that includes bicycles to the value of £10,000* with £5,000 of that for unspecified bikes at not more than £500 each & the remainder for 3 specified bikes (total value stated at £5,000) with a £250 excess. There are no stupid "solid-gold-weighs 50kg " lock requirements when not at home.

Well go and be useful and tell us who that's with then?

I wasn't asked for any receipts for our bikes BTW.

Lloyds Bank Insurance (and amazingly the renewal back in March this year was about £4 more than lat year - and pretty near the cheapest on all the comparison sites) - Over the past 10 years we've probably chopped and changed buildings and contents insurance about 4 times - having used M&S, John Lewis and Lloyds Bank.

The real secret is to PHONE the company direct* and haggle the price - they will immediately give you the difference to reflect what they would have paid the introducer (like the Meerkat) - and then the "Let's see if we get you a better deal" process.

* in reality they are almost all using the same admin company call-centre.

[Paul H]

Urgently shopping for new home insurance that will cover my wife’s new e-bike and cover the laid backs for theft from home.

For some reason E-bikes are specifically excluded from some policies, including mine from the TSB. 
Barclays is one of the exceptions, their cover specifically includes them with other cycles.

[jsabine]

Lloyds Bank Insurance

Interesting, that. We switched to Halifax (fronting for Lloyds) last year, after Pedalcover's switch of underwriters hiked the actual insurance element of our premium by exactly 25%.

PC offered to discount their broker fee, which would have made the final price fairly close, but the Halifax cover was better. Of course, this year's renewal letter was for more than last year's increase from Pedalcover ... (Dropped a little after a whingy phonecall, but I don't think that our current policy is now open for new business, so I don't want to whinge too much.)

I get annoyed by the dance on excess as well. I really don't want to do the mental maths about how a £300 excess means that a £750 claim results in a £450 payout but a £200 premium increase over the next 3 years, so actually you shouldn't bother claiming unless that claim's a grand.

I would love the opportunity to go for a nil excess, but a high minimum claim - £1000 or even £5k (well, maybe £2k. Or maybe £5k. It really depends.) I want to insure for catastrophes - there's been an earthquake or the house has burnt down with everything in it - not for the event that someone's broken in and nicked a laptop, a camera, and two necklaces, nor for me being a twat and leaving a bike unlocked.

I guess that Pedalcover's offer of a excess insurance policy went some way towards fulfilling this, but reading the conditions on it turned me against it for the last year or two that we were actually with them. I don't think I'd take it out again.

[ian]

I only have one named bike covered, which L&G didn't charge any extra for, it just needed to be named. I've never ever made a claim on house and contents insurance, based on external anecdote it's 50–50 whether they pay up without quibble or you spend the next six months arguing.

I also hate the entire excess and no-claims business, the point of insurance is well, insurance.

This all said the renewal quote that came through the door had a bogglingly random £120 hike added to it, so, erm no.

[psyclist]

This all said the renewal quote that came through the door had a bogglingly random £120 hike added to it, so, erm no.

'Price Walking' will no longer be allowed from 1st Jan 2022, for home and motor insurance in the UK. So insurers will need to charge the same for new and existing customers. Hopefully that will put a stop to the continued need to look around due to insurers focusing their price increases only on existing customer.

[ian]

Yes, this relates to my complaint about not being able to email a business, seems the only way you can point out the egregious nature of this is to call them and sit on the phone at which point someone agrees, that yes, they can offer you a cheaper deal. See also BT, whose fantastic new deal for an existing subscriber is to basically charge times 2.5 what they'd charge a new subscriber for the same package. I get that this relies on inertia, but equally, in part, there's deliberately engineered difficulty.

[fd3]

Looking at insurance (not sure why auto-carrot said I'm "urgently" looking when I'm actually "currently" looking) for bikes with buildings/contents:
Coop wants ~£300 and will cover bikes up to £3,000.
Aviva want ~£200 on cover that will include any number of bikes with the most expensive at £3,500.
Admiral want ~£150 on cover that will include (any number of bikes with a value below £350 - does such a thing exist? The kids' Islabikes will be more than this new) Named bikes of a value over £350 - the quote was based on three bikes at £3,500.

For reasons that I can't explain I am cautious about Admiral, whereas my wife is with Aviva for the car and they were good when she had to make a claim.

[Paul H]

Looking at insurance

Try Barclays.

[MikeFromLFE]

For reasons that I can't explain I am cautious about Admiral, whereas my wife is with Aviva for the car and they were good when she had to make a claim.

I had a poor experience with Admiral over a car claim. I'm not sure that transfers across, but it's a warning flag for me.

[fd3]

Looking at an online quote Barclays is more in the M&S territory (£450) including bikes (£280 B&C + 100 for bikes).

Cheers for confirming my bias Mike, it helps.

[Paul H]

Looking at an online quote Barclays is more in the M&S territory (£450) including bikes (£280 B&C + 100 for bikes).

Maybe it's where you live, I just ran a quote and it came to £22 for any number of bikes with the most expensive £3,000
I didn't look at B&C

[fd3]

Yes, probably because I live in brum.  To be fair, I have had other people report an annual premium with Barclays that was equivalent to my monthly quote.