Subject: Best upgrade for your bike... Stand-alone property insurance! Last December, I purchased a new Cervelo P2C as a gift to myself. At first I was nervous to ride it b/c of the expense that I had just laid out. "What if I wreck it?" "What if something happens?" were my biggest thoughts. To put my mind at ease, I called my insurance agent and bought a personal property rider for the bike itself. It cost me $60/year for full coverage on the bike in case anything happened. In May, I was shopping and got called to the front of the store. Someone had backed their car into my bike, crunching the frame. Since the carbon frame was cracked, it was unsafe to ride and had to be replaced. One call to the insurance company, and all it cost me to get it fixed was driving the bike to a Cervelo dealer. Then, in October, as I was moving from my apartment, I had locked the bike to the car and went in to take one last look around. When I came back, I saw someone was putting it in the back of his car and driving off. Another call to the insurance company, and they cut me a check for full replacement value. I know that these incidents would have been covered under other policies such as renters or auto, but those have significant deductibles and could have negatively impacted my cost for those specific policies, or even my ability to have those policies renewed. In the end, $60 bought me over $5k worth of headache-free insurance reimbursements. So, unless your bike has a value that you can easily replace it without any strain, insurance is the best upgrade you can you to your bike. Now, go out and ride lots. |