Renewal in from M&S, where I have currently 2 named bikes over the £1500 limit. Modern 4 bed house, decent area, full cover incl away from home etc. M&S used to be reasonable but is creeping up every year, this time they are after £850 !

A search on here suggests PedalCover to be the most recommended so I have just filled in their online quote request.

Any other I should be trying ?

Thanks

Similar situation here. We had a claim due to a break in last year, M&S renewal went up to over £1000. Switched to Pedalcover and saved a shedload – they use AXA so the same underwriters as M&S.

Happy hunting.

Thanks, will see what they come back with …

We used M&S for years but ditched them this year for the same reason. Pedalcover were really helpful but could not cover us as Axa, who were still underwriting the M&S policy, refused to quote on the grounds that we live on a flood plain! We ended up with John Lewis.

Changed to AA, everything of value is named, buildings and contents, £150 with the AA. John Lewis couple quid cheaper but excess higher.

AA

John Lewis. No quibbles or silly security requirements on their bike cover.

Thanks, will try AA and John Lewis

John Lewis also, one up from the bottom cover, higher limits, less questions.

I’ll be ditching M&S too, just got their quote to renew & It’s up, to £710 & we haven’t had a claim for 2 years! (& that was only for £400)

I’ve just had quotes:
975 with 50 excess, or 818 with 200 excess. So, assuming only one claim (only had one in 12 years), no sense in paying for smaller excess. Going to ask for £1000 excess and see if they’ll pay me annual premium.

AA here too – no one else got near the level of cover and cost.
Under £200 with everything high value named, all the bikes covered for full value, any other bikes up to £1k each, valuable away from home, etc.
Have AA roadside too FoC 😀

Thanks chaps. John Lewis saves me £700…. 😀

Aa wouldn’t cover my bikes s my garage although attached to house has no direct access…….

Read the small print.

Got a John Lewis online quote that is over £200 less than the M&S one, with named bikes and same excesses. AA won’t give an online quote for contents for some reason. Will see what PedalCover come back with.

Read the small print

+1
AA’s wording was very poor last year when I last looked. Cheap, yes. But very unclear and I’d think you would have to argue your way through claims with them.

Just had a quote from John Lewis, £227 for Premier as opposed to £710 to renew with M&S!

No brainer.

trail_rat – Member
Aa wouldn’t cover my bikes s my garage although attached to house has no direct access…….

Read the small print.

Have it confirmed in writing from them that they cover mine in there after reading the terms and it not being clear.
Call them and they’ll clear it up for you.

I did , they said i wouldnt be covered due to no house access.

So i went with pedal cover.

Strange then as plenty of others on here have had no issues with them.
Previous house had the garage attached with no access from within the house and they didn’t question it.

And do they make you use a particular dealer for any replacements? That’s the good thing about pedalcover in that if you have a custom build you can source that from the shop(s) of your choice.

Nope – valuation from a proper bike shop on headed paper is the only requirement as long as you can show the previous receipts.
Same procedure Zurich have used in the past.

Legal and general were only £350 for me just last week.
Full contents and buildings, accidental damage and valuables covered out side the home. With 3 named items, two £5k watches and my Orange 5 at £2k.
Best price i could find by a mile

update – went with Pedalcover. They seem really good to deal with, chat to a broker who understands bikes, tailored cover and premiums almost half my M&S renewal for same or better cover.

Holy thread resurrection Batman.

So has anyone had to claim from PedalCover? Ours has come around, M&S haven’t really increased the quote, but PedalCover are about half the price. I’m mildly twitchy, there are pages and pages of glowing reviews, but I can’t find anyone who’s actually claimed. That means people are saying how amazing they are based purely on price, which is hardly impartial.

Policy docs look fine to me. I still find it a bit odd they don’t put them on their website.

Pedalcover is underwritten by AXA, so you claim direct through them I believe.

I’m not with pedalcover as they couldn’t quote for me as we have had a claim for more than £10k in the last 5 years, but I have just switched from one AXA underwritten policy (source insurance) to another (AA). Had a claim on the previous policy (accidental damage, sent my old laptop flying off the kitchen worktop) which was handled really well, they actually paid out more than I’d spent on the old computer 4 years previous as it was the closest spec for spec that they could find!

Theres some stonking premiums quoted here, under £250 for me, £50 xs every add on and a couple of named bikes.
Direct Line.

Pedalcover is underwritten by AXA, so you claim direct through them I believe.

It’s not so much the claims process, but more the implementation of the ‘special cover’ PedalCover offer. I get that the whole point is that they unspecified items under their terms, but I kind of want to see that when there’s a space in the schedule for bikes! I can just imagine a “well it doesn’t say you have £15k of bikes on here” type conversation.

The policy docs say bikes are covered when locked to an immovable object or in a locked building, which is good. There’s also mention on threads about enhanced cover when in a car, which doesn’t seem to be in the docs anywhere. I just sort of want something a bit more explicit. There’s a scanned covering note from Axa to confirm additional cover when leaving your bike after a triathlon, but not a corresponding one to say “yep, all good, no need to list all your fancy bikes”.

Theres some stonking premiums quoted here, under £250 for me, £50 xs every add on and a couple of named bikes.
Direct Line.

You seem the most vocal opponent to PedalCover, I’m still not entirely sure why! Everyone else’s premium is irrelevant too, it’s not necessarily indicative that they’re overpaying. Direct Line are shit for me anyway – maximum £3k per bike. I’m not really looking to move, the M&S quote is tenable (like I say, it’s what we’ve paid for a few years), PedalCover are raved about, but I want to do due diligence before I move and lose my M&S cover forever!

I’ve been waiting over 3 weeks for a quote from Pedalcover now. Apparently their system had a meltdown and was offline for 17 days(!) and now they aren’t getting in touch as/when promised – doesn’t bode well

Took about a week for me to get a quote, filled in online.

I havent said anything against pedalcover.

I did have a problem with the paid advocates of other insurers popping up on here to say how good they are for cyclist. Its a well known marketing strategy (you can either pay customers or employ marketing companies to do it )which wouldn’t be so bad but those policies were often junk with loads of restrictions.

Any insurer is as good as the policy you buy nothing more or less. As you seem to know, read the policy not the sales guff.

I havent said anything against pedalcover.

The half dozen or so threads I read before suggest otherwise, I don’t have an issue with it, as you say, I do agree that it’s too easy to be sucked in by marketing. I’m still concerned that they say in their marketing bumpf “all your bikes are covered”, the policy docs say bikes are covered, but the schedule has a specific space on the schedule for listing bikes and they’re not there. That feels counter intuitive to me.

My point exactly,

Cyclist are a potentially a valuable market lots of people would like to get into, but its difficult to put together bike only policy that’s reasonably priced for the customer and profitable for insurer without adding so many restrictions that makes the policy worthless.

It works to bundle it in with general home insurance because theres sufficient people without expensive bikes to spread the risk.

Pedalcover take this second option which seems to be a clever move, how its working out for customers I don’t know and you would expect the underwriter to close the hole after a while. (as M&S had to do)

(ps for clarity I used to work in this business but don’t anymore)

njee20 – Member
So has anyone had to claim from PedalCover?

Also very interested to hear from anyone that’s actually used the product

Also very interested to hear from anyone that’s actually used the product

I don’t think anyone has! There are a couple of people on Trustpilot, but it’s all cursory “made a claim and it was super easy” stuff.

I want someone to say “I was cleared out of £15k of bikes and had the cash within 42 seconds” or whatever.

Direct line. Normal bikes up to 500 each so kids covered mine at fixed 3000 watches and jewellery named and covered up to value, cash up to 500, 50k of contents iirc with accidental damage and full buildings with accidental. 36 ish a month. In my book very good value and the Web page you fill in is vv quick and easy.

As I said on the previous page – their quote wasn’t at all cheap, and I’ve got 2 bikes worth more than £3k, so it’s a complete non-starter. I’m not looking to change per se, I’ll either go with M&S or PedalCover, increasingly likely it’ll be the former, just not sure about PedalCover.

Well no ones ever paid me t o”rave about their product” so not sure wtf wilburt is on about.
AA were the best price with the best cover and the simplest to deal with for me and renewal last week was less as no claims or changes.
Ex uses them too and had a claim recently which was faster and simpler than Zurich who she was with before.

wrightyson – Member

Direct line. Normal bikes up to 500 each so kids covered mine at fixed 3000 watches and jewellery named and covered up to value, cash up to 500, 50k of contents iirc with accidental damage and full buildings with accidental. 36 ish a month. In my book very good value and the Web page you fill in is vv quick and easy.

Lots of little exclusions about window locks and the like with DL (we’re with them at the moment). You might be fine but something to keep an eye on.

njee, have you looked at Direct Line Premier Select? Can work out better when you’re putting a few expensive (over £500 or whatever) bike on

AA were the best price with the best cover and the simplest to deal with for me and renewal last week was less as no claims or changes.

They’ve always had very limiting clauses about out building limits and locking requirements. Not one I’d ever go with personally.

njee, have you looked at Direct Line Premier Select? Can work out better when you’re putting a few expensive (over £500 or whatever) bike on

Yes, still a £3k per bike limit. Edit, ah no, sorry, not checked their uber policy. Life’s too short to check everyone’s T&Cs and get myriad quotes. It’s a 2 horse race. The cheap, unproven, slightly dodgy looking horse, and the expensive known quantity. At the moment it’s Known Quantity by a nose.