[Closed] House & Contents Insurance - any better than PedalCover ?

Similar situation here. We had a claim due to a break in last year, M&S renewal went up to over £1000. Switched to Pedalcover and saved a shedload - they use AXA so the same underwriters as M&S.

Happy hunting.

Thanks, will see what they come back with ...

We used M&S for years but ditched them this year for the same reason. Pedalcover were really helpful but could not cover us as Axa, who were still underwriting the M&S policy, refused to quote on the grounds that we live on a flood plain! We ended up with John Lewis.

Changed to AA, everything of value is named, buildings and contents, £150 with the AA. John Lewis couple quid cheaper but excess higher.

AA

John Lewis. No quibbles or silly security requirements on their bike cover.

Thanks, will try AA and John Lewis

John Lewis also, one up from the bottom cover, higher limits, less questions.

I'll be ditching M&S too, just got their quote to renew & It's up, to £710 & we haven't had a claim for 2 years! (& that was only for £400)

I've just had quotes:
975 with 50 excess, or 818 with 200 excess. So, assuming only one claim (only had one in 12 years), no sense in paying for smaller excess. Going to ask for £1000 excess and see if they'll pay me annual premium.

AA here too - no one else got near the level of cover and cost.
Under £200 with everything high value named, all the bikes covered for full value, any other bikes up to £1k each, valuable away from home, etc.
Have AA roadside too FoC 😀

Thanks chaps. John Lewis saves me £700.... 😀

Aa wouldn't cover my bikes s my garage although attached to house has no direct access.......

Read the small print.

Got a John Lewis online quote that is over £200 less than the M&S one, with named bikes and same excesses. AA won't give an online quote for contents for some reason. Will see what PedalCover come back with.

Read the small print

Just had a quote from John Lewis, £227 for Premier as opposed to £710 to renew with M&S!

No brainer.

trail_rat - Member
Aa wouldn't cover my bikes s my garage although attached to house has no direct access.......

Read the small print.

Have it confirmed in writing from them that they cover mine in there after reading the terms and it not being clear.
Call them and they'll clear it up for you.

I did , they said i wouldnt be covered due to no house access.

So i went with pedal cover.

Strange then as plenty of others on here have had no issues with them.
Previous house had the garage attached with no access from within the house and they didn't question it.

And do they make you use a particular dealer for any replacements? That's the good thing about pedalcover in that if you have a custom build you can source that from the shop(s) of your choice.

Nope - valuation from a proper bike shop on headed paper is the only requirement as long as you can show the previous receipts.
Same procedure Zurich have used in the past.

Legal and general were only £350 for me just last week.
Full contents and buildings, accidental damage and valuables covered out side the home. With 3 named items, two £5k watches and my Orange 5 at £2k.
Best price i could find by a mile

update - went with Pedalcover. They seem really good to deal with, chat to a broker who understands bikes, tailored cover and premiums almost half my M&S renewal for same or better cover.

Holy thread resurrection Batman.

So has anyone had to claim from PedalCover? Ours has come around, M&S haven't really increased the quote, but PedalCover are about half the price. I'm mildly twitchy, there are pages and pages of glowing reviews, but I can't find anyone who's actually claimed. That means people are saying how amazing they are based purely on price, which is hardly impartial.

Policy docs look fine to me. I still find it a bit odd they don't put them on their website.

Pedalcover is underwritten by AXA, so you claim direct through them I believe.

I'm not with pedalcover as they couldn't quote for me as we have had a claim for more than £10k in the last 5 years, but I have just switched from one AXA underwritten policy (source insurance) to another (AA). Had a claim on the previous policy (accidental damage, sent my old laptop flying off the kitchen worktop) which was handled really well, they actually paid out more than I'd spent on the old computer 4 years previous as it was the closest spec for spec that they could find!

Theres some stonking premiums quoted here, under £250 for me, £50 xs every add on and a couple of named bikes.
Direct Line.

Pedalcover is underwritten by AXA, so you claim direct through them I believe.

It's not so much the claims process, but more the implementation of the 'special cover' PedalCover offer. I get that the whole point is that they unspecified items under their terms, but I kind of want to see that when there's a space in the schedule for bikes! I can just imagine a "well it doesn't say you have £15k of bikes on here" type conversation.

The policy docs say bikes are covered when locked to an immovable object or in a locked building, which is good. There's also mention on threads about enhanced cover when in a car, which doesn't seem to be in the docs anywhere. I just sort of want something a bit more explicit. There's a scanned covering note from Axa to confirm additional cover when leaving your bike after a triathlon, but not a corresponding one to say "yep, all good, no need to list all your fancy bikes".

Theres some stonking premiums quoted here, under £250 for me, £50 xs every add on and a couple of named bikes.
Direct Line.

You seem the most vocal opponent to PedalCover, I'm still not entirely sure why! Everyone else's premium is irrelevant too, it's not necessarily indicative that they're overpaying. Direct Line are shit for me anyway - maximum £3k per bike. I'm not really looking to move, the M&S quote is tenable (like I say, it's what we've paid for a few years), PedalCover are raved about, but I want to do due diligence before I move and lose my M&S cover forever!

I've been waiting over 3 weeks for a quote from Pedalcover now. Apparently their system had a meltdown and was offline for 17 days(!) and now they aren't getting in touch as/when promised - doesn't bode well

Took about a week for me to get a quote, filled in online.

I havent said anything against pedalcover.

I did have a problem with the paid advocates of other insurers popping up on here to say how good they are for cyclist. Its a well known marketing strategy (you can either pay customers or employ marketing companies to do it )which wouldn't be so bad but those policies were often junk with loads of restrictions.

Any insurer is as good as the policy you buy nothing more or less. As you seem to know, read the policy not the sales guff.

I havent said anything against pedalcover.

The half dozen or so threads I read before suggest otherwise, I don't have an issue with it, as you say, I do agree that it's too easy to be sucked in by marketing. I'm still concerned that they say in their marketing bumpf "all your bikes are covered", the policy docs say bikes are covered, but the schedule has a specific space on the schedule for listing bikes and they're not there. That feels counter intuitive to me.

My point exactly,

Cyclist are a potentially a valuable market lots of people would like to get into, but its difficult to put together bike only policy that's reasonably priced for the customer and profitable for insurer without adding so many restrictions that makes the policy worthless.

It works to bundle it in with general home insurance because theres sufficient people without expensive bikes to spread the risk.

Pedalcover take this second option which seems to be a clever move, how its working out for customers I don't know and you would expect the underwriter to close the hole after a while. (as M&S had to do)

(ps for clarity I used to work in this business but don't anymore)

njee20 - Member
So has anyone had to claim from PedalCover?

Also very interested to hear from anyone that's actually used the product

Also very interested to hear from anyone that's actually used the product

I don't think anyone has! There are a couple of people on Trustpilot, but it's all cursory "made a claim and it was super easy" stuff.

I want someone to say "I was cleared out of £15k of bikes and had the cash within 42 seconds" or whatever.

Direct line. Normal bikes up to 500 each so kids covered mine at fixed 3000 watches and jewellery named and covered up to value, cash up to 500, 50k of contents iirc with accidental damage and full buildings with accidental. 36 ish a month. In my book very good value and the Web page you fill in is vv quick and easy.

As I said on the previous page - their quote wasn't at all cheap, and I've got 2 bikes worth more than £3k, so it's a complete non-starter. I'm not looking to change per se, I'll either go with M&S or PedalCover, increasingly likely it'll be the former, just not sure about PedalCover.

Well no ones ever paid me t o"rave about their product" so not sure wtf wilburt is on about.
AA were the best price with the best cover and the simplest to deal with for me and renewal last week was less as no claims or changes.
Ex uses them too and had a claim recently which was faster and simpler than Zurich who she was with before.

wrightyson - Member

Direct line. Normal bikes up to 500 each so kids covered mine at fixed 3000 watches and jewellery named and covered up to value, cash up to 500, 50k of contents iirc with accidental damage and full buildings with accidental. 36 ish a month. In my book very good value and the Web page you fill in is vv quick and easy.

Lots of little exclusions about window locks and the like with DL (we're with them at the moment). You might be fine but something to keep an eye on.

njee, have you looked at Direct Line [i]Premier Select[/i]? Can work out better when you're putting a few expensive (over £500 or whatever) bike on

AA were the best price with the best cover and the simplest to deal with for me and renewal last week was less as no claims or changes.

They've always had very limiting clauses about out building limits and locking requirements. Not one I'd ever go with personally.

njee, have you looked at Direct Line Premier Select? Can work out better when you're putting a few expensive (over £500 or whatever) bike on

[s]Yes, still a £3k per bike limit.[/s] Edit, ah no, sorry, not checked their uber policy. Life's too short to check everyone's T&Cs and get myriad quotes. It's a 2 horse race. The cheap, unproven, slightly dodgy looking horse, and the expensive known quantity. At the moment it's Known Quantity by a nose.

Can't say they are any more restricting than the others I looked in when I took out the cover.
Their wording isn't the best I'll admit so I called them and had it spelt out in a recorded call with an email to back it up.
Covered locked in the street, covered in car, covered in brick built garage with one door - all for up to £1k per bike with the Cube and YT spec'd with no need to be locked to anything in there.

What about expensive bikes away from home? I like to ride the nice bike to work.

I havent said anything against pedalcover.

I did have a problem with the paid advocates of other insurers popping up on here to say how good they are for cyclist. Its a well known marketing strategy (you can either pay customers or employ marketing companies to do it )which wouldn't be so bad but those policies were often junk with loads of restrictions.

Any insurer is as good as the policy you buy nothing more or less. As you seem to know, read the policy not the sales guff.

i distinctly remember you questioning how they (pedal cover) operate when they first appeared on the scene. i was a vocal supporter of them purely because of what they offered cyclists, but do you really think people are paid to promote them on here?
they offered cover for expensive bikes away from home and abroad and contents cover that was cheaper than the go-to M&S who had dropped the bike value limit down to 2k

i still don’t understand why you have beef with them.

i fact i guess it’s because you are being paid by a rival insurer and are only here to disrupt their paid marketing bullshit 🙄

As long as its locked up to something its fully covered njee.
For the agreed value if its named or up to £1k if it isn't.

I went for the premier shizzle on direct line. Read everything was all good. Anyhoo it's stw so whatever you tend to suggest it gets ignored for some niches stuff 😆

Seems to include everything but quote is the same price as M&S. What's the single item limit, didn't spot it at a glance?

£1500 single item limit - no limit on number of items.
Can up that though.

Cool. Definitely CBA with that, ta.

PedalCover probably edging ahead after a bit more reading. Surely if expensive bikes weren't really covered they'd be dragged in front of the regulator... they seem to have universal acclaim.

Just renewed with Aviva, whole contents policy for £160 with all 6 bikes covered. I paid a small additional fee on top of the standard price to add bike cover up to the value of my most expensive bike.

That's not really any help unless I live in your house and have your possessions, which I don't, i don't think. But thanks. Anyone who is you and lives in your house with your possessions will certainly find that helpful!

PedalCover probably edging ahead after a bit more reading. Surely if expensive bikes weren't really covered they'd be dragged in front of the regulator... they seem to have universal acclaim

That's not really any help unless I live in your house and have your possessions, which I don't, i don't think. But thanks. Anyone who is you and lives in your house with your possessions will certainly find that helpful!

you also have to factor in the insured excess so there is effectively no excess to pay, plus the fact you are able to replace the bike from your preferred supplier(s)*
if my pegoretti or Chesini got nicked i wouldn’t want to be fobbed off with some boring Boardman from Halfords as a replacement.

*other insurance services are available, this post is not endorsed or paid for by any above mentioned insurance supplier.

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Yeah, they must be genuine, it's just odd that they're so much cheaper than anyone else for comparable cover and no one has seemingly ever claimed. Does mean that the many hundreds of glowing recommendations are just based on price, which for a service is a little peculiar, if not surprising.

If they do have people astroturfing for them then they're bloody good, they've got people on every bike forum going!

That's not really any help unless I live in your house and have your possessions, which I don't, i don't think. But thanks. Anyone who is you and lives in your house with your possessions will certainly find that helpful!

Should have said, I'm not astroturfing!

I wonder if it's partly due to attracting a "specialist" customer. So a £3000 bike is worth 20 times what a "normal" person's £150 bike is, but is it as likely to be stolen? It's a more attractive target, but it won;t be left at the station or dumped in the park while you're playing football, it'll probably be locked up properly, kept out of sight, in the spare bedroom rather than the back garden etc. So maybe the usual insurance companies just say "there's a 10% chance of a bike being stolen in that postcode, so we'll add £15 to the policy with the cheap bike and £300 to the policy with the expensive bike". I'd hope they were a bit more sophisticated than that though.

May be something in that.

So can't help you, but I guess in the unlikely event that the original poster is still looking for alternatives to M&S or Pedalcover, he might find my suggestion useful!!

Obviously I'm only kidding, I did totally hijack the thread. There were already about a million, i didn't want to risk filling the internet.

Aa wouldn't cover my bikes s my garage although attached to house has no direct access.......

Read the small print.

Switched to AA a few years back and questioned this as although our garage is attached the direct access door has been bricked up. They didn't have an issue with it then but it's renewal time so will double check

This thread has been a good reminder that my cover with NFU runs out in a couple of weeks. John Lewis is currently looking good, at around half the cost of the NFU. I'll try Pedal Cover and a few others too.

Can anyone comment on how these insurers view second hand bikes. I have several second hand bikes, all of which would have been £5k-8k when new but I paid substantially less second hand. I don't have receipts for all of them (but do for some). Would these insurers pay out if one of the non receipt bikes got stolen? I ask because I fear that I'm going to be paying to insure a bike that they won't cover if the worst does happen.

Thanks

I'm insured with Pedalcover, and you know I've been posting for donkeys years, so you know I'm not a shill. I've not had to claim yet, but I can address a couple of points...

Firstly I'll caveat this by saying I'm slightly tipsy, and my policy docs are at home, so I can't check details right now.

In terms of coverage, the chap explained to me that they don't want you to name the bikes, as then you're stuck with updating the policy regularly and having trouble if you have custom builds. Also the bikes were covered under the 'unspecified personal items' part of the schedule. In my case, I've got 15k coverage for that. So away from home it would cover, for example, a bike and a laptop, but at home, it'd cover just the bike and the rest of the stuff would be under the standard contents figure (unlimited on mine).

Why you can't find claim reviews... I believe they've only been going for about a year. So the chances of someone being wiped out for high value bikes, [b]and[/b] posting a review online must be fairly slim.

I was also impressed by their customer service. I know they're a very small outfit, so I was actually quite impressed when the chap was able to spend at least an hour on the phone with me, on a Saturday morning, talking through the policy, as well as chanting about loads of other stuff including that afternoon's women's Olympic triathlon. They sponsor one of the girls racing, so he really wanted to watch it.

@Mr Smith.

I think I made myself pretty clear in this and previous threads but in for a penny..here we go again.

The fella behind Pedalcover has found a clever solution to the problem of bike insurance for people with expensive bikes by adding them to brokered contents policy. This works because stndalone cover usually doesnt wipe its own arse but adding them to a book of policoes without expensive bikes does.
The only issue I could forsee here is that the underwriter may find themselves with greater number of bike claims than expected and pull the plug which is what happened to M&S.
That aside the Pedalcover overcomes the problem the numerous other companies have who are trying to flog standalone policies, its these companies I have suggested sometimes resort to not disclosing restrictive terms and using shill marketing not Pedalcover.

Theres a few statements there you may need to practice your reading.

I had a quote from Pedalcover earlier this year, followed up by numerous phonecalls from them. My head was up my arse at the time (still is a bit!) & I couldn't grasp the fact that they wanted me to take out an extra insurance to cover some part of the policy (can't even remember what). I went with John Lewis in the end but bear in mind I only have 3 bikes with the highest value one being around 3.5K new & the cheapest being £550.
Was with M&S previously but saved about £400 with John Lewis.

bookmarked...

Never heard of Pedalcover until now, thanks for the heads up.
Just been speaking to Hugh and awaiting a quote.
You would struggle to beat them on customer facing skills!

Sounds like I'm not the forst to be hit with a big price hike from M&S!