Morning all

The Beamers clan are about to up sticks and move to a new house so we are in the process of reviewing all of our monthly outgoings, one of which will be the buildings and contents insurance for our new pad.

Time was that M and S were the go to insurance providers as they insured bikes up to a significant sum without them needing to be specified on the policy, or taking the premium to a bonkers level.

So, what’s the STW standard issue insurer for folks with with a lot* of bikes?

Ta in advance.

(* a lot in our case is 12. Whilst a break in and pilfering of all of those would be a heartbreaking event we wouldn’t replace all of the bikes)

In stw style I can recommend what I use. Peddle cover. Helpful guys on the phones. Loads of cover for bikes including away from home (or other expensive items if you have them) and was cheaper than anything else I could find.

John Lewis was the cheapest for us, 5 bikes, nothing too expensive. Though entering the same details on my phone on the mobile site did get a better quote than the one I did on the normal website. They honoured the lower quote,no quibbles. the bikes are listed individually but i think there standard limit was higher than most.
The one time i had to claim on household insurance we were with the co-op, couldn’t fault their service.

Pedal cover here too. Great price, great cover including bikes home/away/crash damage.

Pedal Cover for me too, couldn’t get a better value quote with anywhere near the level of cover, especially the bike cover.

Not seen Pedal Cover before.

Hoe does it work? Do you need to specify a value for each of the bikes and their individual values?

From memory, with M and S you didn’t need to. They just covered all of your bikes without the need to specify numbers and values.

EDIT – I’m looking at the FAQs on the Pedal Cover site and these Qs are answered.

Just switched to John Lewis as they came up good.

decent cashback from John Lewis through quidco at the moment and a free nest protect if you take a policy out before mid november.

That’s one of the advantages of PC – you don’t need to list your bikes ideal if you like to make regular changes, upgrades or share wheels between them or whatever.

I am just looking to move my home insurance (buildings and contents) – what does John Lewis and others cover up to per bike?

I have two bikes which will cost £4k to replace, one at £3k, one at £2k plus, 3 others ranging from £400 to £800.

Slightly off topic, but I bought my last year’s home insurance from Kwikfit, via Top Cashback. My only reason for choosing them (no bike insurance, BTW!) was that the £30 cashback made it the cheapest quote, by far. Fast forward to now – 11 months later – and still no cashback. Each company blame the other and I’m pretty well screwed! Beware cashback deals!

I just had my M&S renewal through which had gone up, but was still ok. Have had the Enduro as a declared item for a while and I phoned to have an extra two declared bikes put on the policy. This Put the policy up by an extra £180! I said, ah, don’t worry about it, I’ll not insure the other two bikes.

The said TOUGH, you’ve declared them now, they have to go on as a named item and we claim our extra £180 😮

I told them to stick it. They said, well you could always go back through the website as a new customer and get 20% off. I said, after 7 loyal years of never claiming a penny, can’t you do that over the phone?

No. No no no no no.

So I am now shopping around like a madwoman. 9 days to find decent cover. I did speak to a broker who found a great policy, but has failed to email through any of the data as of yet.

Will report back if I find anything good.

LGB ^ read above
Pedalcover or John Lewis depending on your area and the coverage you want
No need to report back, most of us ditched M&S around 2 years ago when they changed underwriters
(Pedalcover, I believe, use the old M&S underwriters and is basically (in simple terms) pretty much their old policy but tailored more towards cyclists, and cheaper)

If your determined to still phone around maybe also try NFU Mutual, others have reported success with AA but I would recommend reading their small print as coverage IMO wasn’t as good as it initially sounded

http://www.johnlewis-insurance.com/homepage/home-insurance/specialist-home-insurance.html

Please note this is not usual John Lewis, it is the Specialist cover level.

I have used for two years now, it covers bikes, boats, loads of gear away from home etc.
Up front it is not cheap, however I pay £480 for buildings, contents (accidental and better cover than normal), 7 bikes, 3 boats, £20k away from home, I get usual legal cover AND extra landlords cover etc.

It works out a lot cheaper than separate policies, and has fewer ‘you must use lock X and have bike stolen on a Wednesday to be covered’ approach that some specialist policies have.

Second year of PEdal Cover. y far the cheapest I found for level of cover and very helpful – talking to a small firm of brokers rather than souless call centre.

All bikes are covered in my garage without having to be individually itemised providing they are less than 10k each. That combined with the accidental damage and away from home cover made it a winner.

Just renewed with M&S as they worked out cheaper than Pedal Cover for the full buildings/contects/accidental cover.

The first M&S renewal came through around £120 more but they had a 20% discount online offer so with that it worked out cheaper, even with a bike specified at £5.5k and the wifes/kids bikes under £1k.

Pedal Cover offered slightly more away from home cover as standard but their standard excess was £150 more than the standard M&S excess and with the M&S away from home cover bumped up to match they still came out cheaper.

Well, after phoning around, getting quotes and all the hassle of dealing with insurance companies I can definitely say, without a doubt, Pedal Cover are by far the best company I have dealt with if you have a number of bikes to insure, you take them abroad and you regularly travel with them in the UK. Absolutely spot on policy, absolute bargain price and really helpful on the phone. None of that ‘apply on line and get a discount’ rubbish.

100% recommend, that’s me sorted, paid up and happy for 2017

AXA (or it might be Zurich) via Fresh Insurance

They all seem to use AXA as underwriters (if that’s the correct phrase)?

Yup, Pedalcover even make it pretty clear that for a ‘normal’ claim situation speak to Axa, for a bikey one call them instead