As you may have seen on the other side, me and a friend have had a couple of cheapy MTBs nicked, combined value around £4-500. What are people’s experiences of claiming for small amounts on insurance? Does the excess/increase in premiums mean it’s not worth it? Insurers are M&S and it’s been about 6 years since the last claim.

I’ve pondered this before and eventually came to the conclusion that if I didn’t claim then I might as well not have insurance – so I claimed.

HTH

Did it make your premiums or excess go up at all?

I think if you’re not going to claim for £500 of stolen bikes you at least owe it to yourself to raise the excess on your policy to £500. That would presumably bring your premiums down quite a bit. 🙂

What’s your excess at the moment?

If it’s £50 a bike then claim it, your premium will go up anyway irrespective of any claims you may make.

When it’s up for renewal go to someone else who is cheaper and I agree with BD about increasing your excess if you’re not going to claim.

Excess is likely to be something around £100 (being market average) unless you requested to have a greater value excess in return for cheaper premiums when you took out policy.
M&S do provide a no claims discount, which at best is usually something around 30% off your annual premium. If you decide to claim it only steps back, rather than disappearing completely, probably it will go back to around 20%, if you have had 6 years since your last claim.
What does your policy cover, most have a limit of £500 (per bike) unless you have specifically mentioned the bikes at inception and increased the value for which you insure them.
Therefore, 2x bikes stolen value circa £500, pay £100 excess, perhaps loose £50 in discount over yearly premium, leaves £350 reasons to still proceed with a claim.
View it from an accountants point of view and it makes sense to use your insurance if the above guidelines sit with what you’ve got as your policy.
market is very competitive, M&S gets good press over cover they give for MTB, Halifax also is equally strong – I insure £4500 5 spot (mainly XTR build) and £2500 Prince Albert and premiums are very good c/o Halifax.
Hope this helps.
I am a claims person for my job.

Did it make your premiums or excess go up at all?

Yes, but nothing too drastic.

Blimey, something approaching a consensus! Cheers for the advice all.