wafflycat wrote:
>
> "Mick" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> Just wondering if anyone can suggest a good insurer to get my mountain
>> bike
>> insured. Living at Surbiton, Surrey and was bought new two years ago for
>> £999.
>>
>> Any ideas on what I should expect to pay to insure it?
> If you have household contents insurance, check your policy, it's
> entirely likely it's already covered by that policy.
Up to a point. Having recently played the "renew our household policy"
game to include several valuable bikes we found that different companies
have different default levels of coverage. Several stop at £500, for
example. Some allow you to go over a basic limit if the bike is a named
item, though this incurs extra cost. In the end we went with M&S
Buildings and Contents, which not only seemed to be the best overall
policy we looked at but was cheapest too, and covered bikes up to £4K
with no extra paperwork.
> Check small print
> as to how you have to secure bike. Example, my household policy says
> bike has to be kept in a locked place at home, and whislt out, I have to
> use a D-lock to secure it to an immoveable object.
Good advice. Some require a Sold Secure Gold lock, which basically
means doubling the weight of many bikes and spending a good chunk on a
new lock.
What we also found is that individual insurance of bikes outwith house
contents insurance is ridiculously expensive. Last year we had coverage
through CTC's CycleCover because we ran out of time to find a house
contents policy that would take 2 £1,800 tourers, a £1,250 freight bike
and a £700 folder, and it cost us almost as much to insure them as this
year's entire house contents and buildings that includes the house and
all its contents as well! Aside from the cost, CycleCover had some
pretty bloody stupid points against it. For example, my sticks out like
a sore thumb freight bike which isn't exactly shouting out "steal me!"
as it would be easy to trace and relatively hard to flog at the pub and
is never used for high speed or daft off road adventure etc. cost the
same to insure as a very good MTB of the same price. Madness. College
campuses weren't covered, so had Roos taken her tourer to work rather
than the hack bike (covered under house contents) it would /not/ have
been insured had she locked it in the Life Sciences key entry bike cage,
but it would have been covered if parked a few hundred meters away in a
back street out of sight just as long as it was locked. Madness.
Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net
[email protected] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/
