My renewals due. Buildings and contents coming in at just under £500, it’s actually gone up a tenner!

That’s with several bikes covered both at home and away. I’m thinking it’s a bit expensive, but it might be right given the value of the bikes.

Currently with pedalcover, who else are worth looking at??

NFU seem to have a decent single unnamed article limit, I couldn’t see if there was restrictions on bikes, anyone any experience with them? Or who else do we like at the moment

ta

*pulls up a chair*

I got rid of M&S who couldn’t tell me what I was or was not covered for last year, mid-way through a policy, by their own agreement.

Pedalcover – AXA have been good on the claim, but looking like 3months to get the last £600 and the £62 excess policy is a shonky thing that has now cost £124 to save £80….

I have given up insuring the canoes – £300-500 of plastic was going to cost £170 a year to cover, and I have two of them!

NFU,

Very lovely conversation.. however they wanted just under £1000..

I might pass on that..

We’re with Zurich (I think, might be AXA) via Fresh Insurance. Great cover away from home, no item limit, all that. I’ll find a number and text you.

I went with admiral a couple months ago, they were cheaper than anywhere else I got a quote from.

I am more interested in the insurance cover and quality.

I have had a few run-ins with insurers over the years…

– eSure – “Yes sir, I know someone just smashed into your car on a busy roundabout, but it is a Sunday. We can’t recover you until Monday. Can you not get someone to  drag it off the road?”

– Churchill – “Yes sir, we know you gave us full address and phone details of the (transpires they were) uninsured driver. We even know they posted us a cheque. But we cannot get their details (as they are not on insurance database). So we have put the claim against you, can we have your excess and that does mean you just waved bye to 3 years NCD.

– Towergate (British Canoe Union boat insurance) – yes we know our policy wording grammar suggests that a canoe has to be indoors on a trailer locked to something immoveable, but honest we would cover you for any event. No we won’t put it in writing.

– M&S – yes we know you have a letter saying your canoes are covered, but we changed our minds. No you can’t have a partial refund. We also have on record the wrong bike information, and did not have a record of a policy with you, despite you paying for it for 16 months.

I just don’t trust insurers at the moment…

That’s the crux of the matter, you never know how good your insurance is until you need it…..

Ok so maybe once, just once, someone will read one of my posts offering advice. Go on compare the market, I know it’s a pain, spend what seems like a complete ballache amount of time filling in the answers to various questions.

But, it’s worth it, direct line had for some reason bumped my insurance up by a 100 quid or so from 350 ish to 460 ish.

Did the compare went with Lloyds, 40 percent introductory discount giving me a level of cover I’ve not had before.

Main points, accidental cover on contents and buildings with ridiculous amount of  allowance to rebuild and cover the cost in the case of total loss fire burglary etc, 2 bikes 1 at 1.5k and one at 3k insured anywhere, garden buildings up to 5k, personal possessions including phones tablets laptops in and out the home up to 5k, couple of individual jewellery items specified, legal protection all for less than 22 quid a month.

Plus I get buy one get one free on cinema and now some food places.

Done last friday btw so i presume the 40 percent will still be live.

Buildings and contents coming in at just under £500

Ours is about £120! No bikes though.

Post Office just changed their underwriters, so my quote went from £70 (including bikes!) to £300+ this year…  Looking around, this isn’t unrealistic.  However, I still switched to Admiral as the bike cover was just as good (in the house), and the buildings & contents was much better.  Post Office doesn’t cover ‘gadgets’, Admiral does.  I’ve been with Admiral for a few years on the car, and they’ve been really good (efficient, quick, friendly) on that.  I also like that they employ about 7000 people in their contact centre in South Wales…

I took someone’s advice off here & checked out the AA. I’ve been with M&S who bumped the premium up after 2 years, then tried John Lewis who bumped theirs up as well & am now with AA for less than £200 a year with one bike listed at over 3K. The price I’m paying now is almost £300 less than John Lewis wanted for the same cover!

Had a burglary claim with pedalcover/AXA – were really good at handling it, minimal upset considering the stress I was under (selling house at the same time probably one of our ‘viewers’).  Claims assessor came round, was funny about some stuff, like an old laptop, but suggested things we hadn’t put in for, such as my time in repairing the broken gate, broken shed and some minor repairs to the house I was just going to get on with.

But, and a big but, and one I will keep writing about, when I moved AXA wanted another £1000 on top of the near £500 premium right at a time when I was paying out money left right and centre and super stressed.  And we were moving to a much nicer area (only 2 miles away)  I was really not very happy but had some much other stuff on so had to pay up, and then cancelled a couple of months later when I’d got things in order for a partial refund.

Now with admiral pretty good, but paying almost the same in named bikes as the overall (very good) contents and house insurance – and non of the bikes are really that special in the scheme of things.

I will probably go with Aviva next, due to wifes discount and start self insuring for the bikes, they are all getting on a bit (newest is 5 years old now), and £300+ a year is a reasonable amount to put away towards a new one

I will give pedalcover a go as they were great to deal with.

A couple of relatively small storm damage claims back when I was with M&S were dealt with painlessly but they just kept ramping the premium up

Dedicated bike cover was a non starter when I last looked, they wanted something like 10% of the value of the bike per annum to cover it.  I’m surprised anyone takes this out and they are in business.  Must just be those that don’t miss several hundred a year…

I’ve been with M&S who bumped the premium up after 2 years, then tried John Lewis who bumped theirs up as well

Seems pretty standard for them to offer you a good rate to join and then double it for year 2. We move insurer every year as a result.

My renewal quote went up £80 this year.  Called Direct Line and invited them to insert it up their arse.  Twenty minutes later after Compare The Market etc ended up calling back to grovel and ask them to let me renew after all.  Wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t spoken to the same person twice.

Not needed to claim but pretty confident Winston Wolf will take care of it.

Thanks all

Loads to go at!

But, it’s worth it, direct line had for some reason bumped my insurance up by a 100 quid or so from 350 ish to 460 ish.

Same here, but like a fool I renewed without properly checking 🙁  Had a look around and LV seemed to be best for me (I wanted to cover a load of photo equipment etc. for loss when travelling). Next time …

I wanted to cover a load of photo equipment etc. for loss when travelling

look at specialist camera cover, it’s very cheap, I had £20k of kit covered for about £125/year

Direct Line Premium/Plus cover here. Cant remember how much it is but it’s as cheap as I could find it for the cover we want. Bikes, jewelry and travel all under the same cover. I think there may be some breakdown cover there as well though we’ve never used it. Had to claim once and it was really easy and painless.

I recently moved from M&S to PedalCover, covers a few decent bikes and the family’s too