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In a really tricky situation here, perhaps someone can shed some light.
I recently built up a new bike. Going on the price I would pay for replacing all the parts (i.e buying from CRC), the bike would cost around £4800 to replace if it was ever stolen.
So I took out a new household insurance policy with MoreThan and added the bike (their individual limit is £5k, whereas my ETA policy for my other bikes has an individual limit of £4k).
However, Stif kindly agreed to value the bike for me (the more evidence the better, right?), but their valuation came in at £6,223.30. This was based on full RRP (which IMO isn't reflective of the actual cost of replacement) and things like buying a Shocker frame with a DHX and also then purchasing a CCDB with Ti spring.
So I checked with my insurer and they have said that they obviously can't under insure.
So how the hell do you determine replacement value for a custom built bike??? I can build it for £4,800 by shopping around, whereas Stif would need £6,223.30. If it's over £5k I'm not covered at all, so this is clearly an issue.
Anyone have any experience of this?
why not just do your own list of compenents, the price and where that price is available?
Problem with including 'bargins' is they may not be aroudn in 10 months time when it comes to making a claim?
you could buy a car for that!
Put all the components in your "basket" on CRC.
Print the page, including the total at the bottom.
on m&s im sure you just keep all of your receipts...that way you just get back what you paid to build it......
all i was told was to keep the receipts for the build with them....as others have done on here when they have had to pay out...
obviously sounds different to yours, but worth checking
you have too much money, don't think you need to worry about insurance!
I went to a local bike shop (whom I knew) and they gave me a quote for a replacement. They were rather flexible about this but not in a cheating way - they didn't massively over-value. They framed it in terms of an equivalent for stuff that was not even remotely available at the time and hadn't been for years.
I wasn't really asking for opinions on whether I had spent too much on a bike. I actually built it up for significantly less, by snapping up deals, so even if I split it in 12 months time I would pretty much make my money back. That's generally how I buy bikes, so it barely costs me anything over the years. I could sell them all now and be almost back to where I started financially.
Thanks to those with helpful comments though. Problem is, by grabbing bargains, it's not really a true cost of replacement. The price I paid in a sale isn't what the part would be likely to cost to replace again new, so not sure how much use my receipts will be 🙁
I did the same as molgrips when I had a bike stolen, just listed all the components and got a local bike shop to print it and sign it on headed paper. The prices were all approximate but loosely based on CRC to keep it under the figure I had quoted when I took out the policy. It was good enough to get a pay out anyway.
like i said, m & s will just require your build receipts...afterall they are only insuring what you paid for them, why should they insure you for the rrp if you paid significantly less?
ive just spoke to m & s to confirm, and they said as long as its under £4k for a custom build in total, just keep the receipts...
Visit your LBS. They do this kind of thing all the time.
I'd go to your LBS and see if they can value it, we used to just have a pad for doing insurance valuations.
More Than were rather pricey when I got a quote for house insurance and added the bikes on, it doubled!
afterall they are only insuring what you paid for them, why should they insure you for the rrp if you paid significantly less?
It's the opposite actually. They make their money on the premia, so the higher the premium the better. If they allowed people to "bargain hunt" and pay lower premia then insurers would go bust in a month.
Under insuring is actually a bigger issue to insurers than overinsuring (since you've actually been paying a premium which reflects how much you want paid out, even if it is overvalued. They don't really care so long as everyone keeps paying high premia, that's how their model works).
Take photographs of the bike, please please please please pleeeeaaaaaase take photographs of the bike and save yourself some hassle. Better still take a photograph of yourself with/on the bike so your in the photo. Even better take photographs of yourself on the bike outside your home where the bike is insured.
Take photographs of the bike, please please please please pleeeeaaaaaase take photographs of the bike and save yourself some hassle
don't worry, there's lots of those 😀 😉
Only problem is, WHO decides on the replacement cost? Surely someone appointed by the claims handler. So if they adopt the same valuation approach as Stif, i'm not insured.
I don't like the uncertainty of not knowing whether or not i'm insured, sort of defeats the purpose.
I'd go to your LBS and see if they can value it, we used to just have a pad for doing insurance valuations.More Than were rather pricey when I got a quote for house insurance and added the bikes on, it doubled!
Stif is my LBS. Surely all LBS have the same issue - they can't shop around like I can.
MoreThan are charging me 5% of the value of the bike. That's a huge improvement on the 10% that ETA charge me.