Bike Insurance

gliese581d
gliese581d Posts: 26
edited September 2011 in Road beginners
Hi

Can anyone help me out with some good Bike Insurers??

Thanks

Comments

  • nferrar
    nferrar Posts: 2,511
    M&S home contents is the standard response. A specialist bike insurer will want 10% of the bike(s) value per year as the premium + they'll have a couple of pages worth of 'get out of paying' clauses. With M&S you don't even need to declare bikes under £4k
  • Peddle Up!
    Peddle Up! Posts: 2,040
    +1 Been into this and agree. A search will throw up the relevant thread(s).
    Purveyor of "up" :)
  • sungod
    sungod Posts: 16,522
    ^^^this and this
    my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny
  • nochekmate
    nochekmate Posts: 3,460
    Yep another vote for M&S - slightly more expensive for my home insurance but the saving on additional cycle insurance for my household makes it financially worthwhile.
  • DavidJB
    DavidJB Posts: 2,019
    I used a specialist bike insurer, can't wait for it to run out so I can switch to M&S :)
  • thegreatdivide
    thegreatdivide Posts: 5,803
    Just joined M&S so that my Cento Uno could be covered. It cost over their £4k mark so I had to pay extra, but now both my bikes are sorted and that feels good.
  • Cubic
    Cubic Posts: 594
    If, like me, you share a rented house, most home insurance companies (e.g. M&S) aren't interested in offering cover.

    Of the companies I found that did offer insurance, none would insure a bike as valuable as my Giant TCR.

    Therefore a specialist insurer was my only option. :(
    Cannondale Synapse Carbon

    Giant Anthem X 29er 2
  • Secteur
    Secteur Posts: 1,971
    Insurance (all forms) is a con. And they will wriggle out of paying something like 80% of claims.

    My mantra: only buy insurance for something you can't afford to replace.

    This doesn't answer your question, obviously, but thought it might be worth stating.
  • nochekmate
    nochekmate Posts: 3,460
    Whilst i do not enjoy paying out for insurance poilicies (and never take additional insurance from manufacturers regarding their products) the additional premium related to M&S home insurance makes it a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned for my bikes.

    It's taken me a long while and a lot of hard work to buy the bikes that I have just for some scrote to possibly take them all away and leave me to face the best part of £6K+ to replace them.

    For what it's worth M&S customers seem to report a very high level of satisfaction should they need to claim on their policy.
  • nferrar
    nferrar Posts: 2,511
    @secteur - where are you getting your stats from? Thin air I'd imagine... The value of insurance is certainly debatable and indeed some companies have a lot of small print T&Cs they can use to get out of paying but on something like an M&S policy they have a good track record of paying out with minimum fuss. Surely the point of having any contents insurance is to cover you for what you can't easily replace. If you're on £50k a year an your bike costs £100 then yeah insurance would be fairly pointless - but then it would be no additional charge under an M&S policy...
  • esspeebee
    esspeebee Posts: 174
    If your home insurance policy will cover bikes then that's usually the most cost-effective way to cover it against theft and the like. However, a specialist bicycle policy will usually provide more comprehensive cover, particularly if you're doing mass-start sportives or racing.

    Personally, I have £600 of bicycle cover on the home contents insurance, to cover my "other" bikes, and the good road bike on its own policy, because the other would only go up to £1500 of bicycle cover.

    If you do want a specialist policy, then the ETA one (https://www.eta.co.uk/insurance/cycle) generally looks like the best cover for the money.
  • esspeebee
    esspeebee Posts: 174
    Oh, and yes. Insurance is only statistically worthwhile for those items that you couldn't afford to replace. If you can manage to absorb the cost of replacing your bike should you crash it, you're better off doing so. The insurers, obviously, make money by collecting more in premiums than they pay out in claims, so the probability of making a claim times the potential size of that claim is always significantly less than your premium.

    This is roughly what Secteur said, in slightly less inflammatory terms.
  • CasperCCC
    CasperCCC Posts: 14
    Secteur wrote:
    Insurance (all forms) is a con. And they will wriggle out of paying something like 80% of claims.

    If you can afford to self-insure then, statistically, you'll save money. But that's not the same as saying it's a con. It's just saying that for some people, it's not worth buying insurance. For others, it is.

    As for the "wriggle out of paying something like 80% of claims"? This is absolute bollocks. Show me the claims statistics that show that.

    For what it's worth, motor insurers almost always pay out more in claims than they receive in premiums. Do a search for "motor insurance underwriting loss". It's a crazy business.

    Answer to the OP: I've just signed up for an M&S policy. £2 less than my existing policy and covering up to £4,000 instead of the £1.5k I had with the last insurer.
  • mrbez
    mrbez Posts: 113
    So M&S will not cover myself, who rents a house and shares with my best friend?
  • mrbez
    mrbez Posts: 113
    So M&S will not cover myself, who rents a house and shares with my best friend?

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