My wife is moaning about the cost of our contents insurance with M&S. Basically she wants me to pay for bike insurance separately but this looks v. expensive e.g. £120 pa for one bike. So any contents insurance with unlimited bikes at a more reasonable cost would be appreciated.There are 8 bikes in my garage so I can’t afford to insure them individually even though they’re not all mine

Try AA? They beat my directline policy and covered 1 expensive bike.
Not sure how it would be with 8 as you have to list them. Via quidco cashback can be had also.

Halifax?

Co-op have a very generous limit for bikes/single items, £1000 from memory. May not cover every bike you have, but probably most of them.

Agree with her, as long as she separately insures her shoe collection…

But serious, tell her to get a grip. IME you won’t get cheaper than M&S if you’ve decent bikes (and actually anything else that you regularly take outside the house).

At the risk of getting all the previous M&S insurance arguments going .. please do post up here if you find something that is as good as the M&S ‘£4k no need to specify limit’ as a £1K limit wouldn’t do it… and my insurance is up for renewal in Jan at which point no doubt they will have found some excuse to double my premium..

I just left Direct Line and went to M&S.

Direct Line Plus policy covered multiple bikes but only up to £1500 per bike (maximum) and you had to list each one. Bikes under £1000 were covered automatically. Up to a total of either £5k or £6k altogether.

Of course they told me this after 11.5 months when i rang to ask about the renewal – hence the reason for leaving them….. I had not been told this when i took out the policy despite asking them several bike related questions (and being lied to) so had not been insured for my bikes had i been burgled in that time.

NFU Mutual have good cover including theft and accidental damage with no restrictions on value as a standard part of their home&contents policy. There are quite a few postcodes that they won’t cover though, especially in urban areas, but worth checking….

btw, you might have trouble getting cover for bikes you don’t own, as it’s debatable if you actually have insurable interest……

I honestly don’t think you will find anything better than M&S. Greenbee and Hiscox might be worth a look.

The bike specific insurance is a complete con, I would rather self-insure than pay 10% of the bikes value per year in premiums, it is extremely difficult to remain within the small print.

I went with Greenbee last year (Now John Lewis) as they offer almost identical cover to M&S but were significantly cheaper.

Just had my renewal notice through and it’s still cheaper than M&S!

I haven’t had to claim off them yet mind….

Thanks for those – will check them out. 🙂

Legal and General.

Mmm Greenbee ‘online quote’ have rejected me. Had this problem with M&S last year whose new underwriters had decided we now live in a flood risk area… but would keep us on as an existing customer. Hiscox only do bikes to £1k … looks like I’ll have to wait and see what ridiculous renewable M&S come up with …

Just had a look at John Lewis, the cover for bikes doesn’t look to be as good as M&S, this is from the John Lewis policy document

Pedal cycles
Please refer to your policy schedule to see if this
cover is included within your policy.
We will pay up to £1,000 for each pedal cycle (up to a maximum of £2,500 for any one claim

I am with co-op and they were the cheapest by a mile for me.

Thanks everyone, will keep investigating!

M&S were very expensive for me as were Green bee and I live in the country.

Local insurance broker has a price match deal with Zurich so worked out best for me, might be worth comparing a local broker after you’ve tried the usual suspects?

I was previously with the AA, their policy covered everything including £3.5k of downhill bike as standard. They were also very helpful and quick when settling on theft of 2 of our bikes. They were more expensive than M&S at last renewal but that was nearly a year ago so not sure current ££ competitiveness.

I’m with Nationwide – unlimited cover for multiple bikes at home but capped at £2000 away from the home.

I need to start looking now myself, currently with Direct Line and I do not think I am properly insured!

So it looks like Green Bee (John Lewis) is out, as is M&S for me unfortunately.

Will try the AA and Nationwide.

Out of interest what’s expensive ?

I’m 26 quid a month with premium cover – depends what you want out of insurance I guess .

Got an obscene amount of money on bikes and tools in my shed and m n s were cheapest by country mile !

Is it your post code that’s expensive ?

When I lived next to mastrick in Aberdeen it.was lots more – but I had a bike nicked ( and recovered ) and my car robbed !