Bike Insurance

I have cracked my carbon frame. Does anyone have experience of claiming on Bank of Scotland insurance? I am covered to £1.5k on a bike I bought in November 2010. The frame was damaged in a crash on a club run.

What happened; hope you are alright?! Very good luck with the claim.

I'm fine thanks. A car broke hard in front of me and I couldn't slow quick enough from 35km to avoid going into the back of it.

Good to hear you are alright; just like benjam, you big guys
on carbon have to work on your breaking distance ;-)

Indeed. I'm hoping it the insurance comes through and I can get a Canyon frame as well.

A car broke hard in front of me

Whoah, sounds nasty. Glad you're OK.

Indeed ;)

I just spoke to the insurance and they told me Wheelies Direct would deal with it.

In the words of Bollo "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Gulp! Glad you're okay and very good luck indeed with the claim.

... The thing is, M&S were the complete opposite. When I had my bike stolen, they were practically bending over backwards to give me as much money as they could! It was astonishing. ...

The plan is to shift my home and contents insurance to M&S pretty much based on this post alone.
(oh and this: http://www.lfgss.com/thread28337.html)
But as a last check before I click pay, anyone else would like to comment on their experience with M&S insurance?

If you are going to do that, could you ask what they do if one bike goes above 4K in value? Cheers!

I'm going with Hiscox - changing our home insurance, on VB's advice. They'll cover bikes up to higher values.

Anyone got any experience with Velosure? Got a quote at the weekend at their stall after the Sandown Sportive and they seemed very reasonable.

How fucking hard is it to cancel a policy with cycleguard??? For fucking christs sake!!!!!

Have you tried phoning or emailing them and saying "I'd like to cancel my policy please."?

My trick for getting through to busy people in offices is to FAX. It will be there in the room on paper, in writing. Someone will see it and deal with it. A posted letter would also work, but it fax is more convenient. And it wont get lost in a sea of other letters arriving at that office.

Have you tried phoning or emailing them and saying "I'd like to cancel my policy please."?

No, I was just wondering if anyone knew how hard it was, just in case...

I've been in contact with them repeatedly... Cycleguard dont charge you a monthly premium like a normal insurer. They use a finance company called PIN finance. As far as I can gather, PIN stump the total annual premium, plus interest upfront. You then enter into a contract with PIN for monthly repayments... .so you're stuck for a year, and I was advised last night that you cant notify them of your intention to cancel unless its within 30 days of the policy renewal date. Utter bollocks.

Read fine print etc.

My trick for getting through to busy people in offices is to FAX. It will be there in the room on paper, in writing. Someone will see it and deal with it. A posted letter would also work, but it fax is more convenient. And it wont get lost in a sea of other letters arriving at that office.

Fax? What the fuck even is that? You'd be better using smoke signals.

Carrier pigeon.

Maybe thats my problem... I've been trying to cancel my policy via short wave radio, but I cant seem to get through.

a slightly off topic question, but I want insurance for 2 laptops, 3 bikes and a couple of other valuables for a rented house that I will only live in for 3 months. Does anyone know of a policy that would be a short term rolling policy for contents for rented accommodation, or even one that allows you to switch houses on the same policy?

a slightly off topic question, but I want insurance for 2 laptops, 3 bikes and a couple of other valuables for a rented house that I will only live in for 3 months. Does anyone know of a policy that would be a short term rolling policy for contents for rented accommodation, or even one that allows you to switch houses on the same policy?

Endsleigh do short term and on gocompare there is also a tenants insurance policy quote feature
http://www.endsleigh.co.uk/Home/Pages/short-term-insurance.aspx
http://www.gocompare.com/tenants-insurance/

Might be of interest to some people- I have M&S contents insurance, including the out of home cover which includes bicycles to the value of £4,000.

I gave them a ring at lunch as it occured to me that the in home cover was unlimited, so would that extend to a bike if it was greater than 4k in value.

They said no, if you had a bike that would cost (say) 8k to replace it had to be specified, and further to that if it was not, and was stolen, even if you wanted to claim 4k for it they'd refuse the payout.

I had been assuming that I could just phone up and say "hi, bike X got stolen, I'd like to claim for it, I understand the maximum is 4K".

Pretty much all insurance policies stipulate that you must specify valuables in whatever format that may be (over a certain value)
So stuff like expensive camera exquipment, bikes, laptops/computers, jewelery, paintings.
M&S are very good for the cover though given the price, here in the Northern home counties it's particularly cheap for contents cover :o)
Saying that the IAM (whom I'm a past member of) are currently doing a deal if you join their cycling membership you get automatic unlimited cover for bikes
Check the link, it's a lot of cover for £20/yr
http://www.iam.org.uk/cyclist/iam-cycling-membership

Surely that's not insurance cover though?

That looks incredible, so I went and read the small print.

Most notably: They will replace your bike with a voucher for the (current) value of the bike to be redeemed at stores of their choosing. Further, they will only issue a voucher upon admission of liability by the third party involved in an accident.

Which means: Get your replacement bike from Halfords or Evans, and wait months and months for the voucher.

No good if you have anything custom, and they get to define the amount you get based on their idea of equivalent minus wear and tear.

You've quoted bits then made up stuff, no where in the policy does it say wait months & have to go to halfords does it!
If it is custom then surely from an insurance purpose POV you'll take stock of everything you bought and have photos otherwise no matter what policy you go with you won't have any chance of recovering your costs especially if it is of value that you would have to specify on ANY contents insurance policy....
Why not actually contact them and ask what the situation is regarding custom bikes before passing judgement & making up scenarios?