Home insurance for bikes kept in garage

dawebbo

Hi - do people have any experience of which insurance companies will cover expensive bikes stored in a garage (attached to house) as part of home insurance. Also my bikes consist of various parts sourced from all over the place, some bits new, some secondhand so value is somewhat subjective - would you use rrp to replace everything? Do insurance companies accept a rough estimate when taking out the policy? It's not particularly clear when looking at policy schedules online.
Thanks

sungod

if it's a self build you'll need a definitive list of components, back it up with plenty of photos

then if you need to claim you do it based on the cost of replacing those components - assuming a new for old policy

best to add up the current costs to calculate the replacement value, don't base it on any special offers, just go for widely available prices

as for garage, it'll depend on security level, best to discuss direct with insurer

jp1970

Marks & Spencer's home insurance include bike cover as standard. Having checked with them regarding my 'fleet' of bikes, my standard policy covers each bike for a max of £2k. Also if you have built up the bike from 2nd hand parts ( as I have ) they will usually replace the bike to the equal value of the stolen bike, the bike is also covered away from home!

foggymike

M and S is getting extremely expensive now though. I've just had to renew and am paying £150 more a year due to their change in policy regarding limiting complete bikes to £2K. Saying that it's still cheaper than doing it separately.

My best bikes are built from scratch with receipts available for all parts but that cuts no ice with the £2K limit - you can't claim for the parts separately if stolen, only damaged. I checked and if it gets stolen and it's not declared and the total value (by their reckoning) is over £2K then no payout at all.

In their defence you can at least add bikes over £2K and pay more which many won't do. We increased the excess to compensate a bit.

dawebbo

Thanks for the advice guys - I'll make sure I keep a photo log of my various bits.

I'd initially heard that M&S was good, but the quote I got was far too expensive (>1k).

I ended up with Hiscox, they seemed to cover everything I was after and have quite high individual limits so didn't need to provide a war and peace length description of everything in advance.