My Santa Cruz Nickel got nicked at the weekend and my Insurance company has put me in touch with Wheelies Direct to get a replacement.

Any experience of dealing with them?

They don’t stock Santa Cruz. I want to change to a bike with greater travel that can still climb – so options are:

Lapierre Zesty 514
Orange 5 pro or AM
Giant Trance X1

I have to make up the price difference from the Giant to the others.
Recommendations please.

You know you can ask for the cash – they can’t force you to deal with Wheelies unless you want to?

Yes, thanks for pointing it out though.
It’s quite a good deal with Wheelies since you are offered a brand new like-for-like bike. Cash would be a lot less.

You should be able to get the full replacement cost of your SC Nickel though, rather than a reduced amount.. which you could then buy something else with! You may need to fight your corner a little and say that you want a like-for-like replacement, not a completely different bike! It costs the insurance company much less to give you a replacement bike than it does to give you the cash to buy yourself a replacement.
Not trying to put you off any of the bikes offered by Wheelies, just saying you don’t have to restrict yourself to what is offered.

I took the cash once. Wheelies quoted me on replacement parts, and then gave me a 20% discount on the cash settlement price! I turned this around on the insurance company and pointed out wheelies charging me an extra 20% if I source the replacement parts from them.

I negotiated witht the insurance company and I settled for the cash in the end. I despise Wheelies and after 2 experiences with them I will avoid them like the plague.

cant help with the bike decision,
but ive dealt with wheelies as my company used them as the provider for our ctw scheme.
no problems at all.

OK, thanks all.
I’ll take some time and evaluate the options.

My insurance put me in touch with Wheelies as well for a replacement bike. I didn’t want any that they offered and so took the cash. It takes a fair few phone calls and fighting your corner but you can get the full offered value in cash, just stick to your guns, be polite and keep at them.

Excess minus 20% discount for the cash alternative here.

I have just dealt with wheelies (who act as the go between for the insurers), however Muppet here only had insurance that came up WELL short so I’ll have to try for a cash settlement on the two stolen bikes combined to give me a fighting chance on something ok. If they insist on replacing the BMX like for like this leaves me enough for a new MTB frame or something but nothing else… grumble ..grumble:(

They honoured a like-for-like replacement on a second hand (probably 4th hand by the time I got it) 14 year old frame, with 8-10 year old components.

Cash equivalent for spangly new 2012 model….

I recently got a replacement bike through Wheelies.

One thing they will do if you’re spec’ing a custom build is 10% off any parts that you want to ‘upgrade’ over your budget.

For example, the frame I eventually chose cost £350, but I could have ‘upgraded’ to a Cove (rrp £599) and got a £59.90 discount.

It’s also worth carefully detailing the spec of what you had stolen – I initially mentioned my stolen bike had a Raceface Evolve chainset, which it did. However, I had bought the cranks & 3 chainrings as separates, which like-for-like cost a chunk more than an off-the-shelf chainset. Therefore I had more to spend on the replacement.

Going through the same thing myself and find them very good to deal with. They were very thorough when going through my custom build and I was happy with the settlement. There are so many good bikes on the market, the fact that Wheelies don’t do all of them is actual a plus point 😀

Would I have preferred cash? To be honest yes, but if I’d taken cash I know some of it would have been spent on non-bike stuff, which my wife refused to let me do 😆