topend bike insurance – specific or on home contents?

all you people with costly bikes, do you have your bikes on your home contents insurance or have specific cover just for them? as i’ve got a £1,500 MTB on my contents insurance and it’s quite reasonable, but i’ve now almost finished building a bike that’s getting on for 3x that amount in value so not sure how the insurers will react to that. i haven’t asked them yet, so obviously that will be the next move. in the meantime, though, what are your thoughts on the best value, and if you have a specific policy, who’s it with?

Having just sorted a claim in a week flat on a £2.3k bike, I can thoroughly recommend AXA and their bike people Wheelies Direct.

Specific policies are a rip off (about 10% of the bikes value per year) and are riddled with small print and get-outs:

i.e.
Approved locks
Not insured after dark in a public place
Insured in a shed during daytime but during hours of darkness must be in a brick building
Not insured unless the whole bikes stolen (just the wheels? Tough! – I fell foul of that one)

Contents insurance is much much better, there is one thats head and shoulders above the rest, but I’ve stopped recommending them as there must be a glut of people claiming for bikes after all the publicity on this forum, may spoil it!

ok, the contents route i figured was better. thanks chaps. and spooky, if you fancy letting me in on the secret my email’s theflatboy at gmail dot com.

i understand if not, though!

I thought my bikes were covered under the household insurance but when I called to renew and add the bikes directly to the policy I was told I was covered for a maximum of £750 for sporting equipment. That doesn’t even cover 1 set of wheels. To cover the full value they wanted an additional £920/ year.

I’ve now got insurance with E & L[/url] who charge £32/month but will replace new for old (if less than 3 years old) or a fair replacement value if it’s older. They also cover accidental damage and will pay out if you only have your wheels (or whatever) lifted. Yes, you have to have an approved lock (Oh no, it’s such a hardship… 😉 ) and you have to comply with the conditions of insurance but when you’re looking at close to £5k for one bike I don’t reckon that’s bad at all.

£32 a month! I think thats what my buildings and contents come to, including all the bikes!

Two letters – M and S

M&S Insurance is very good at covering bikes on household insurance

Hiscox.

http://www.hiscox.co.uk/

thread closed?

I tried M&S – their policy doesn’t cover the full value of the bikes.

Not cheap but I’d rather know I’ll get a payout for replacement if anything does happen.

Its max £4k per item or collection. Now to me, a collection is something who’s value would decrease if another part of it was stolen…My hardtail would still be worth the same if my full sus was nicked.

I originally had specialist bike insurance but it is a complete rip-off and there are so many clauses I had no confidence I’d be able to get them to pay out should the worst happen. I ended up switching to M&S (couldn’t use my previous contents insurer, Tesco, because they only cover up to £750).

I tried M&S – their policy doesn’t cover the full value of the bikes.

What the hell are your bikes made of?

We had E&L but soon realised it was a rip-off. My dentist recommended M&S as they covered his carbon road bike. Got rid of E&L and contents insurance with Direct Line and now just use M&S.

£20 a month, seems good value to us. As said above, will cover any individual item up to £4000.

I just spoke to a nice person at M&S who confirmed their cover would extend to the bikes but the premium goes over what E&L are charging me by £80 a year.

Drac – is it really that uncommon for people to have bikes worth more than £4k? Admittedly they would only have been slightly over the £4k mark before the Shimano price increases but the new replacement valuation is scary.

I’d advise anyone with cycle cover (of any kind) to get a new replacement quote as it might impact your insurance.

I use Barclays Finer but you need to be a Premier customer, and it’s not cheap. Absolutely fabulous cover tho – any amount, no conditions, no questions…

M&S will cover over £4000 if you tell them, and they’ll obviously charge a small additional fee.

is it really that uncommon for people to have bikes worth more than £4k?

No but for way less than £32 per month you can add a specific item like aP says.

E&L are crap mind. So many stipulations.

I have to use a gold ‘sold secure’ lock (I do anyway) leave it somewhere in plain view or in sight of CCTV if left unattended (I do anyway), have a secured shed or keep the bike indoors (I do anyway). Really, how hard is all of that to comply with?

The quote I got from M&S worked out more expensive than cover from E&L. I’m not saying that’s everyones experience, just saying it’s mine. Oh, and if I wanted cover away from home that would’ve bumped the price up another couple of hundred £’s.

Did you look at the ‘Premier’ or ‘Standard’ cover? I was just quoted £421pa for standard and £684pa for Premier (including away from home cover)… this is for contents insurance as well as my bike.

Currently paying a total of £870pa for 2 seperate policies, one with Endsleigh for contents and one with E&L for my bikes… I think I might look into switching 😯

http://www.hiscox.co.uk/ <— seriously, call this lot

It was for Premier cover. I’m going to call back later because I just got a completely different quote online to the one I got earlier and the one I got over the phone having given them exactly the same info.

My house( 4 bed detached) and contents cover my ‘NAMED’ Soda(full replacement), plus the other 4 bikes(750 each) at home or away as long as secured and for accidental damage. The 200 quid excess means that all this comes in at 31 quid a month. I was paying 50 a month just for house/contents and crappy 300 quid pedal cycle cover.

I found M&S had got expensive for me so a looked around and found ING about 1/2 the price of M&S with more cover such as emergency call out. I found them up to chat about bikes and I was told that mine are covered but I don’t see any info about that on the site now. When I took mine out you could specifically mention single items so list your bikes – I was told I could do this over the phone as well.

ok, i’ve just gone to renew ours and been informed that the max cover for a bike is £2,000 so now i quite quickly need to get it sorted. M&S website doesn’t appear to be working. any other alternatives to recommend? hiscox comes out at £480p.a. including items up to the value of my bike…

well i’m sure you’ll all be pleased to know i went for ING – came to £386 including 2 very expensive bikes declared. not too bad.

thanks for that flatboy, I’ll give them a call and see what they can do for me 🙂

good move, they seem to have pretty good cover by default and, unlike all the others i tried, were happy with the values of my 2 bikes.