Bicycle Insurance?

Equipment
25

That student’s insurance should have paid for your bike or they should have paid for it out of pocket.

Personally, I wouldn’t ride an expensive carbon bike to school. It’s more likely to get stolen than anything else as most any lock and be defeated in a minute.

Car insurance is relatively cheap for the amount of insurance you get. You are getting vehicle loss, property damage, and liability. Your potential loss could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or even a million if you severely injure someone.

Bike insurance, on the other hand, is relatively expensive for the amounts involved.

2 Likes
26

If your in an accident and you are liable your bike wont be covered, likewise if your bike is stolen from your car your auto insurance wont cover it.

27

My vehicles aren’t insured (beyond required by law). So if anything happens, I am out.

30

After my road bike was stolen, I decided to get insurance on my more expense Crux. I could’ve used my home insurance but it wasn’t worth it. I compared Sunday and Bike Insure. I think the quote from Sunday was close to $40/month maybe 37… and Bike Insure was $25 for the same coverage so that’s what I went with.

31

this is so simple. it’s not a bike thing.

insurance companies make profit.

only insure things that will wreck you financially - your house, health, car

same goes for warranties re profit but never buy a warranty for a car / house / anything

every time you hear someone cashing in on a warranty or insurance is like someone winning at the slot machines. they will always profit.

they have advanced level mathematicians / statisticians that figure out what they will lose and then expert sales people and marketers to sell for the most possible profit.

save that money and build a general emergency fund

5 Likes
32

Insurance companies have lost money the last 4 years. My company has lost money 19/20 years.

So that’s not always true.

Currently the state of insurance is pretty bad, they are losing money due to fraud and abuse due to attorneys is pretty rampant causing the average consumer to pay for the manipulation by bad actors

33

One thing I can’t find on the market is insurance that covers you for rental bikes.

Some rental firms offer the ability to pay a little extra for insurance, but many don’t.

It’s always in the back of my mind that if my rental was stolen or I crashed and wrecked it that I’d be facing a big bill.

Especially pertinent as most rentals are nicer / newer bikes than my own :joy:

Interested to know if anyone has found a cost effective solution for an annual policy that covers this aspect?

34

stop…that’s not a thing.

companies don’t lose money 19/20 times. they are out of biz

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35

check to see if Visa / mastercard (or whoever) has something like that. I have no idea but they sometimes have coverage for stuff that is surprising.

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36

Our auto insurance aspect has lost money. It’s offset by the other offerings.

37

Which means your company hasn’t lost money 19/20 years. One line in a multi-line company is a big difference. Any company that has truly lost money 19/20 years is probably out of business, or one of the state insurance funds…

And, there are plenty of insurers that have been making money the last 4 years too, I work with a bunch of them. Investment ratios can make companies profitable that are losing money on multiple lines too, especially with the way interest rates are.

For everyone else - go get yourself a good independent agent or broker for your personal and small business insurance if you run one yourself. Generally they’ll be able to help you get coverage from the best company, not just what the one you call has to sell you, and that includes where you need extra coverage (or don’t) for things like expensive bikes. Not to say there aren’t some not great agents out there, but 100% the best option having someone competent on your side.

38

I know we don’t lose money, but not all insurance offerings are profitable.

This is in response to saying “save your money for
Emergency”.

Right now bike insurance works, someday it might not and rates will increase and insurance providers leave the market

39

In general, I’m in agreement with having an emergency fund. And since a bike is a luxury you probably shouldn’t be riding a $10k bike if you can’t afford to replace it.

Still, Bikeinsure looks super cheap, especially if you use all the features like traveling and racing.

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40

it’s not that it’s cheap or not cheap. it’s just that every $1 you spend on insurance, a large part of it is going to profit for the insurance company.

so you’re losing x% of that dollar and losing opportunity cost to invest / save / pay off debt, etc…

it’s just a general philosophy that I think will serve people well…to never buy insurance / warranties for small stuff (stuff that won’t bankrupt you). not just talking about bikes.

anyway…that’s just my opinion. there’s value in spending money sometimes to relieve worry I guess.

just don’t look at the 1 time out of 1,000 you wish you had insurance / warranty. or the 1 time someone is grateful they did have it. look at the 999 times it was money and opportunity cost wasted - that part is invisible.

and don’t listen to anyone who tells you insurance companies / warranties don’t profit. go to any major city and check out their buildings! they are LARGELY profiting and holding you back from advancing financially when you buy their stuff for things that are needless (like bikes).

ETA: btw you’re not just paying for profits for these companies. you are FIRST paying their overhead (employees, advertising, rent) THEN they STILL profit.

you are losing every time you buy insurance. you need it to protect you from destroying your life (health, car, house). there it’s worth losing / paying / insuring. not for a bike. of course it will suck if it gets broken / stolen…but you’re losing money to insure it.

ETA: type this into google “profitability of insurance companies 2023”. you’ll find some great articles…like this: “In his annual letter to shareholders, Buffett highlighted insurance and reinsurance company profit results as the bright spot of the earnings picture for 2023.”

as a side note you can do the same search for “warranties”. their profit margin is astoundingly high. these warranties are a HUGE percentage some company’s profits. Best Buy can sell you stuff at cost and still do fine with warranty sales.

How This Retailer Actually Makes Money | The Motley Fool.
Would you like a warranty for that?
Ever wonder why the friendly blue-shirts at Best Buy push extended warranties so hard? It’s become a huge profit stream for the company – potentially even more lucrative than the actual business of selling electronics and appliances. If you check out the footnotes on Best Buy’s most recent 10-K (page 74, if you’re looking), you’ll see that the company’s “revenues earned from the sale of extended warranties represented 2.8%, 2.7%, and 2.6% of revenue in fiscal 2013 (11-month), 2012, and 2011, respectively.” That might not seem like a lot, but the margins on extended warranties are very high. Best Buy doesn’t disclose its profitability on warranties, but they are estimated to be 50% or higher. In the past year, Best Buy had revenues of $48 billion and operating profits of $1.2 billion. If you assume that 2.8% of revenue came from warranties with a 50% operating margin, then that’s approximately $670 million in operating profit. In other words, more than half of operating profits came from warranties.

1 Like
41

I generally agree with you but you also have to be flush enough to self insurance. Like, you could save $300/year and drop the comprehensive on your auto but you have to be able to come up with the thousands to repair it when necessary.

And I agree that one should never buy a warranty on a toaster or pretty much anything like that.

I’ve only traveled with a bike twice and I ended up with a dent in my top tube. My gf at the time ended up with crooked rear stays. So our damage rate was 50%! If I were traveling today I’d be hesitant to bring my fancy carbon bike.

If I were traveling a lot with a bike or racing crits every weekend, I’d probably buy that insurance.

1 Like