mountainbike insurance

sigorman85

anyone know of a good but reasonable bike insurer?i have never thought about having it untill i brought a decent/semi decent bike. i have a 2011 specilized camber comp and whats sort of price should i be looking to pay?

sigorman85

just done a quote and was 83 pound for a year??? any good

tofu21

Add it to the house insurance policy.

Pay attention to the small print. Make sure you have the correct locks etc...

Anonymous

What are you looking to insure against?

Plain theft - house/car insurance, depending where it is (some house insurance may not pay out if it's nicked from the car, but the car insurance might - or may not).

Accidental damage caused not by riding (e.g. drop the bike, drop something on it, run over it in the car!) - house/car insurance.

A crash while riding - tricky one. Some house insurance might pay up but some are getting wise to this now. A dedicated insurance may be better.

Do you want to insure yourself also, i.e. for costs thanks to ending up in hospital etc? There are dedicated insurances that may cover bike and you.

Or consider the cost of the premiums for a good insurance, how many times you'll likely claim in a 5 or 10 year period, save the money instead and be the insurer. i.e. pay for a new bike or repair *if* the worst happens, which it probably won't. Bear in mind the depreciation in value of your existing bike too and how much it would cost to replace like for like. i.e. Given 5 years you could probably replace it with the same for next to nothing. At least check what an insurance will pay for as a comparison, like for like, or new for old.

agg25

I was after high £ cover and found using morethan home contents were by far the best.

sigorman85

theft and damage as i ride to work and i have had a bike nicked befor at a previous job i wasnt coverd... any way i would like the components to be coverd aswell

tofu21

It cost me about £30 to add my Pivot 5.7 Carbon to the house insurance. I don't live in a crime hot spot so I'm sure that has helped keep the cost down.

It is covered for more or less everything (theft, accedental damage, crash damage including events. The only real stipulation is that it is locked to an immovable object then not in use.

I know people that need to use locks of a specific grade etc... which can make life expensive.

I find it amaxing how many people don't have their bikes insured. Lets face it, for most bikes we are talking less than an set of Nobby Nics to cover the bikes for the year.... it's madness IMHO.

If anyone wants to nick my HT it would do me a big favour, I'm after a new one so just forking out the excess would be great )

Anonymous

tofu21 wrote:

I find it amaxing how many people don't have their bikes insured. Lets face it, for most bikes we are talking less than an set of Nobby Nics to cover the bikes for the year.... it's madness IMHO.

Depends if the insurance will actually pay out. It's easy to get some form of insurance, you just ask to cover "a bike" and they say yes, probably thinking of some cheap bike, or you bump up the cover for away from home to a certain amount but the small print says an individual item can only be up to a particular limit.

House insurance provides better cover for theft in the home just on the standard cover, so good if you lock the bike up indoors (safest place). The away from home cover is the one you usually have to add extra to the insurance to cover the bike, but outdoors the bike is always in my sight. If I wanted to lock a bike up somewhere it would be the cheapest bike possible. So not that fussed about the away from home cover basically (though I have some).

tofu21

deadkenny wrote:

House insurance provides better cover for theft in the home just on the standard cover, so good if you lock the bike up indoors (safest place). The away from home cover is the one you usually have to add extra to the insurance to cover the bike, but outdoors the bike is always in my sight. If I wanted to lock a bike up somewhere it would be the cheapest bike possible. So not that fussed about the away from home cover basically (though I have some).

I would never make assumptions on what is and what isn't covered with insurance. I always understand, as best I can, what I need to do to ensure my bikes are covered and I know when I am not covered.

Most policies cover bikes in the home under a given value, that value will be dependent on the policy. I think that ours is relatively low about £300.

The best thing to do is talk to your insurance company to understand what is covered and what isn't. That way you want have any nasty supprises. If you know you aren't covered away from home and it gets nicked you are on your own.

andy_welch

And how likely it is that you will actually need to make a claim. Think about how insurance works. You pay a premium based on the risk, which also includes a profit margin for the insurance company. So, on average, you always lose. Personally I only insure something that I really couldn't afford to replace and couldn't easily live without. So, the house and cars are covered, but that's it. If that includes some cover for the bikes then great, but I'm not paying extra for it. When I think of all the things that I could have paid insurance premiums on over the years then I reckon I've easily saved enough to replace even my most expensive bike.

The mistake that most people make is to only think about one thing i.e. it would be a pain to lose my bike (or whatever) so I'd better insure it. But you need to look at all your risks over your lifetime to see why insurance doesn't actually make sense. For example, my bike might get nicked, but the vets bills for the dog might not be as high as the total cost of insuring her for her whole life (or vice versa).

Cheers,

Andy

cooldad

Pretty much this^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I have a cheapy off ebay for if I really want to ride to the shops or something - actually a nice old Rockhopper that cost me about £20 once I'd sold some bits off it and replaced with stuff from my stash. If someone steals it they must need it a lot more than me.
Decent bikes are kept in the house, transported in the car, or being ridden.
I insure for disasters only.

And don't get me started on extended warranties - bloody pirates.

tofu21

cooldad wrote:

Pretty much this^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I have a cheapy off ebay for if I really want to ride to the shops or something - actually a nice old Rockhopper that cost me about £20 once I'd sold some bits off it and replaced with stuff from my stash. If someone steals it they must need it a lot more than me.
Decent bikes are kept in the house, transported in the car, or being ridden.
I insure for disasters only.

And don't get me started on extended warranties - bloody pirates.

How do you people sleep at nights?

It comes down to your appetite for risk (sorry work term there). I’m a fairly risk adverse person. If I can insure against it I more or less will.

The bikes are insured. The dog and two cats are insured (I’d hate to make a decision on if I want to spend £2k on vet bills or put one of them down). I’m insured for death (pays the mortgage off etc..) and I’ve got private medical cover through work. We’ve got mobile phone cover though our bank and my wife has claimed on that twice and I have once. This list goes on... I like to reduce the risk of having unexpected bills landing on the door mat.

It sounds like a lot of people on here are prepaired to take a far more risky approach to things and pay the consiquences if they happen.

cooldad

By the time you've insured all the little things, over a period of time, you might as well just pay if or when something happens. Or maybe I'm just not careless.
I have a small collection of old mobiles at home, still in perfect condition and in their original boxes. My laptop is about 10 years old.
I got my first phone in the ?early 90's? ( a long time ago), sold it about 15 years later, in the box, for a lot more than I paid for it because it was a collectors item. Go figure.
I have medical insurance, and my car is insured. That's enough.

Anonymous

With bike insurance you may be thinking if the bike is nicked you want a new bike, and fair enough, but really the bike they nicked is probably well depreciated and to have order restored all you need is exactly the same bike. Probably just a few hundred quids worth after a few years. Something I can afford to fork out if the worst happens, but chances are it won't, or will happen rarely, so better the money is in the bank or paying for more important insurance (car & house).

What you need is a depreciating insurance, so buy a new bike you cover it in the first year for full value and pay the premium. After that, much lower premiums for the lower value, until it becomes pointless to insure. Or just save, make it hard to nick, and take the risk

agg25

tofu21 who are you with for insurance??

Briggo

agg25 wrote:

I was after high £ cover and found using morethan home contents were by far the best.

If their house insurance is anything like their car insurance, good luck with claiming.

tofu21

agg25 wrote:

tofu21 who are you with for insurance??

We are with AXA.

Ian-G

tofu21 wrote:

agg25 wrote:

tofu21 who are you with for insurance??

We are with AXA.

I'd urge a little caution with AXA. I'm insured with them and my bike was stolen from my garden shed two weeks ago.

I believed that my policy covered me for £2500 - plenty of cover for a 'new for old' replacement on a second hand 2008 Carrera Banshee X that cost me £300. However, when I went through AXA, they claim that their policy is restricted to £1,000 per bike INCLUDING any accessories, which wouldn't have been enough to replace my bike & accessories (including numerous upgrades) new for old.

To make matters worse, given the 2008 spec versus the current Banshee X spec, and the upgrades I'd made, AXA's preferred supplier (Wheelies) valued my bike at £2099 which means that I'm significantly under-insured for a like-for-like, new-for-old replacement meaning that I'm probably going to have to settle for a £1000 cash settlement rather than a shiny new two grand bike - lesson learnt!!

The good news is that I have managed to pick up a 2011 Giant Trance X Ltd for a bargain £800 though I'll still be contesting the payout.

tofu21

Ian-G wrote:

tofu21 wrote:

agg25 wrote:

tofu21 who are you with for insurance??

We are with AXA.

I'd urge a little caution with AXA. I'm insured with them and my bike was stolen from my garden shed two weeks ago.

I believed that my policy covered me for £2500 - plenty of cover for a 'new for old' replacement on a second hand 2008 Carrera Banshee X that cost me £300. However, when I went through AXA, they claim that their policy is restricted to £1,000 per bike INCLUDING any accessories, which wouldn't have been enough to replace my bike & accessories (including numerous upgrades) new for old.

To make matters worse, given the 2008 spec versus the current Banshee X spec, and the upgrades I'd made, AXA's preferred supplier (Wheelies) valued my bike at £2099 which means that I'm significantly under-insured for a like-for-like, new-for-old replacement meaning that I'm probably going to have to settle for a £1000 cash settlement rather than a shiny new two grand bike - lesson learnt!!

The good news is that I have managed to pick up a 2011 Giant Trance X Ltd for a bargain £800 though I'll still be contesting the payout.

Not good. Was your bike a named item on the policy?

Ian-G

Nope - but then my policy doesn't require any items to be named.

cooldad

So you think a £1000 cash settlement for a second hand bike that cost you £300 is a bad deal? Seriously?

Ian-G

No not at all. My point is that I would urge anyone seeking to take out bike cover, to read the small print on their policy.

The policy I took out, and which I pay higher than average premiums for, claimed to provide me with £2500 of bike cover on a new-for-old, like-for-like basis (their terms, not mine!) when in fact it only provides £1000 of cover because I only have one bike, which makes the claim of £2500 misleading and irrelevant - that's my issue.

Anonymous

As mentioned a few times basically, read the small print.

This situation is fairly common too, again as said, look at the individual item limit. Frequently it's lower than the full amount they'll pay out.

I think this is what made the M&S policy bad for new policies. Used to be rated the best for home insurance for bikes. They've got wind now like many that people have expensive bikes now.

new-for-old, like-for-like basis

like-for-like is another common clause paired with new for old which means you don't get a full replacement. Whilst they may buy you a new bike, if they can get something with the same spec for £1k less, that's what you get.

A bit like providing you with a new Skoda instead of a new Golf. Could be same spec (and they're pretty much the same car), just different badge and price

agg25

Thought £30 / year might be a bit cheap. For covering my 5.7c it up'd the premium per month by about £20 and it's listed separately on the contract. Bikes under £1500 aren't needed to be listed so my other bikes are covered too.

lasty

I have carole nash house insurance . They added an extra £25 for my carbon hardtail stumpy and my rockhopper winter bike . Values of £1000 for the stumpy and £600 for the rockhopper were accepted and listed seperately , dunno how they`d go on in a claim situation but i reckon that goes for most of the companies - need to get some specs for the small print .....

mattyg2004

I'd rather have it separate that way If I ever claim my house insurance wont go up.

Oh and having a carbon frame I want accidental damage cover

Anonymous

Usually a lot more costly for a dedicated insurance compared to house. Can pay as much per year in premiums for a bike as you would for complete contents.

My house insurance has a no claims element to it anyway.

And why would carbon be an issue? It's generally tougher than steel and aluminium.

mattyg2004

deadkenny wrote:

Usually a lot more costly for a dedicated insurance compared to house. Can pay as much per year in premiums for a bike as you would for complete contents.
I've got a number of high value items on my house insurance already

My house insurance has a no claims element to it anyway.
Thats what i dont want to lose if I crash my bike

And why would carbon be an issue? It's generally tougher than steel and aluminium.
Thats something we both know. Although I have just had a new frame as the dealer found a "crack" he showed me but with no sign of any carbon dust I wasn't convinced