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

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!