I thought we had a thread on this, but a search didn’t yield anything.
Anyway, apparently AXA have changed their policy wording and Pedal Cover have just contacted me saying a flat like mine will no longer be covered. Never had to claim, but always good to know the contents and bikes were protected.
What other options out there are there? Is there anything that can cover everything, including the bikes in transit on a plane, similarly?
The tricky bit is we’re actively in the process of selling our flats and looking to buy something new, so in all likelihood I might be in a different place in 6-9 months where pedal cover would again be able to insure. So I just need something that will give me suitable protection for the interim. For example, my TT bike going on a plane in a couple of weeks time (as ever, these things don’t come to light until you try and renew … my current policy expires a week on Monday)
I’m with Pedal Cover, have been for years (in a house) but I’m wondering about the value now. I don’t buy the high end bikes that I used to, and I don’t travel to races as much. Probably time to have a look at the market again.
I have had Yellow Jersey insurance in the past as standalone for my bikes. They give full cover on air travel if you have the top end product of there’s. That’s what I had, got my £500 entry fee back through that when I couldn’t do Lanza. Most airlines wont give a great deal of compensation if they damage it I dont think. Plus I can imagine trying to get them to cough to anything will be a massive arse ache.
Its not bloody cheap though. My P3 on Ultimate cost more to ensure than my Audi S6 did!
Few people recommended PedalCover to me but I found them hard to deal with. No website, all done via phone and email. Emails went unanswered, trying to get questions answered was hard
Barclays house insurance with bike add-on (+£20 or something) is still covering me for any bike up to £3.5k. No need to specify which and how many. Brick garage though so not sure how they’d do for an apartment but perhaps worth a look?
Thanks. That’s the kind of alternative I’m after. But the challenge would seem to be the lack of any race specific mentions. I’d need to check their stance on crashing whilst racing, or theft from transition areas etc. Plus damage in flight which is a primary concern.
I know right. This seemed to be the only way to get cover for everything though. Pretty sure the house insurers wont cover the theft from transition etc as their rules will be must be locked with x standard lock.
My yellow jersery covered all sorts, race curtailment, theft from transition, theft of components, wheel damage, wetsuit theft etc. It also gave a fair amount of damage cover to the bike and yourself. Some of that you would get covered via travel insurance but good to have for UK racing
This is a tricky one. I’ve travelled quite a bit with my bike recently, with a few different airlines. Most of them make you sign a waiver limiting their liability to a few hundred pounds. And even then you need to check the bike at the airport as soon as it arrives because if you leave the airport they’ll just say it got damaged when under your own care. Without paying out a fortune, it was very difficult to find any insurance company who would insure when in transit with an airline. So I used a bikeboxalan which I think is the best bike box. The bike is well anchored inside and can’t move inside the box, and the box has a crush pole to stop the box crushing under weight. The problem here is if airport security/customs open it - if they aren’t careful closing it, the crush pole could ping a spoke. So I wrote a note and stuck it to the outside of the bike box asking them to be careful! It was opened both going to and from the USA. No damage thankfully. My home insurance now covers my bikes in most situations including in hotels and airbnbs with lockable doors. Getting cover in transition is difficult and cover for racing, but I decided that transitions are generally well-secured and my bikes are second hand, 8 years ago they’d have been superbikes but now they are almost “run of the mill” and so don’t really stand out that much. When I had a new bike 7 years ago I did insure it with ETA I believe but unless you want to pay top top dollar it’s difficult to cover all eventualities so hopefully a good bike box and a second hand bike helps to mitigate…!
Right… Been with John Lewis a while, but latest premium is frankly a joke.
So need to jump ship - bikes obviously top of the contents list (but they live in an integrated garage, dont really travel with them other than races - never left; so relatively low risk.
Someone mentioned Barclays above which would be my first port of call as I seem to have a growing portfolio with them.
Yeah have a look further up, my experience with Aviva was positive. My issue with ( I think) Barclays was that they only pay a fixed amount for all the contents in the garage in the event of theft. Plus Avila were cheaper anyway.
Have you all obtained quotes with these companies direct, or via comparison sites?
The issue we had on buying our new house is that with extensions, >50% of the roofing is now flat, which limited what I was finding was possible on comparison sites.
