insurance for home build bike

fuzzdog

Just finished building a bike for the daily commute. It's built with a brand new Boardman alloy frame from Ebay, a mixture of stuff I had laying around and new stuff. It's fitted with new carbon planet x forks and some decent Ultegra wheels. Everything is in nice condition or new. It's cost me about £250 to put it together but I recon replacement value of about £1000.

However, when I look at the insurance websites they all want to know make and model and value for off the peg bikes.

How do I go about this with a custom build like mine.

andrewjoseph

what sort of insurance? specific bike insurance or home insurance?

my home insurance covers my bikes (or any other single object) up to a value of £6000. don't need to specify bike make or value as such.

as long as you have the info of the build, you can use that to claim for the value of the complete bike.

fuzzdog

I'm after specific bike insurance. Just for the bike really.

andrewjoseph

in my opinion it's not worth it. my home insurance with M&S covers for bikes in home, outbuildings, on tour, left unattended as long as locked to immovable object or car.

so if the bikes were taken out of the shed, as long as the shed had reasonable security (normal locks), they would pay for replacements even though ours are custom builds. When touring as long as the bikes are secured at cafe stops or overnight, the same cover applies.

fuzzdog

Okay. Ill look into it.
Cheers

dabber

I've found that most (if not all) insurance policies that cover the bike away from home have to be locked with a "Sold Secure" lock. Now, I don't know if I'm missing something but all of the "Sold Secure" locks I've found are totally impractical to be carried either on one's person or attached to a nice sporty bike.

I've just bought a new bike that my house insurance will cover me whilst at home but not away from home.
I'm left with the view, so far, that I'll have to take a chance away from home and be ultra careful.

fuzzdog

I've just had a good look at cycle insurance policy for adding to home insurance. It seems that they are covered away from home as standard as long as they are under £1000 with a good lock. However coming back to my original problem. If you don't have an off the peg bike ( which most don't( it's highly likely most people will have at least upgraded the wheels) then they require you to have receipts for all the parts. In my case. I have some. But not for some of the older but still expensive parts. And I got my brand new frame for a song. £50 including postage. How could I peplace it for that ? replacement value would be in the region of £1000.
There must be other people with this problem . What do you do?

fuzzdog

Okay.
Update from M&S insurance. As you said Andrew. With M&S anyway, as long as the bike is under £1000 as long as you have photo evidence of all the parts( invoices etc help but not essential) then it's okay. I wonder how it works in practice.
So might go with that.

turbotommy

I've claimed on insurance for a stolen bike with nothing but photo evidence in the past. It was with the co-op but I think it's fairly standard practice.

I'd recommend taking photos of anything high value even if you do have receipts to be honest. A picture is worth a thousands words as they say!

MountainMonster

Bring the bike into a shop, pay them £20 and have them a valuation all on the same sheet. I had to do this for a custom build before, and it saved my skin when the bike eventually got nicked.

Most decent shops can get the RRP for any bike bits.

schlepcycling

I claimed a few years ago from M&S (when their limit was £4k per bike) and all my bikes were self builds and I was able to provide them with photos of each bike and email receipts for most of the parts and they paid up no problem.

rafletcher

The issue is the value of the bikes now - most "affordable" policies limit that to £1k/bike. Specific cycle only (like CTC or Butterworth) are expensive. I've an expensive home policy that cover bikes up to £5k each - so I pay probably double what a "normal" contents policy would be, but maybe half a "standalone" cycle insurance cost. Insurance is through Sterling FWIW.

bluesparx

My home build costs more like £1800. I hit the same problem filling in an online application form, however after ringing the helpline, the insurance company agreed it would be ok if i just called it a 'custom' build and marked the frame with a uv postcode. You pay the premium based on the bike's value (estimated by yourself) anyway.

fuzzdog

Yeah. I ended up putting it on home insurance and along with my best bike. They are both insured away from home now as long as they are locked with a decent lock etc in a sensible place. Bla, bla, bla.
It was not that much more than just the bike so I think it was worth it over just bike insurance really although I haven't got any third party or personal insurance included.
If you claim you need to have some proof. ie photo's invoices or as said before bike shop valuation.