Bicycle Insurance Can Save Your Ride
You paid good money for that bike. You worked hard and saved and now you’ve bought it and invested your money. You certainly don’t want some thief coming along and taking your possession. How can you prevent it?
I thought that a good idea would be to buy insurance against bicycle theft. You insure your car, don’t you, why not do the same thing for your bicycle. I’ve heard that bikes get stolen every day in my city and I thought that bicycle insurance would be a good idea to cover my investment. Now most people lock their cars when they leave them, so I knew I had to do the same thing for my bike. I bought a good lock and I am very careful about locking my bike up every time I leave it anywhere. I use a really good U-Lock and wear the key on a chain around my neck. If your bike is worth anything at all, then it’s worth getting a good lock. It turned out that a friend of mine actually sells insurance, so I thought I’d start with him with my questions.
I asked him about how to get bicycle insurance and he said that my homeowners or renters insurance policy would cover my bicycle if it was stolen. But there are problems with that. He explained that there were a lot of limitations and exclusions. For one thing, he said that my bike would probably have to be stolen from my home to be fully insured. Now what are the chances of that? I keep the bike inside whenever I’m home, so the thief would have to actually break in in order to get the bike.
I was under the impression that if I had bicycle insurance and the bike was stolen, my insurance company would buy me a new one. Wrong again. My friend told me that if my bike was covered, I would only be reimbursed for the value of a new model, less depreciation for every year old my bicycle was. I’m thinking that, depending on the rate of depreciation, I may end up owing money if my old bike was stolen!
My friend told me that I had to maintain good records for bicycle insurance. He told me I should take pictures of the bicycle and make sure the pictures included any serial numbers which the bike might have. That was for identification purposes. I needed to have receipts for when I purchased the bike. I had had the bike for a while, so those were a little hard to find, but I did. He also said that whenever you make a claim to an insurance company about a theft, you need the police report attached to the form. So, if the bike is actually stolen, be sure and report it to the authorities. It is also very important to be accurate when declaring the value of the property stolen.
The important thing is not to let your bike be stolen in the first place, but if it is, if you follow all these steps, you have a good chance of getting it back or, at the least, getting it replaced.
James Hoag