UKC

In the alps this summer I will be leaving a lot of expensive kit in my car for a few days at a time. Can anyone recommend holiday insurance that covers this? Ideally one that you have experience of claiming on.

Most of the main providers seem to cover up to £200 or similarly tiny amounts. I'm happy to pay a bit more for peace of mind.

Robert

In reply to Roberttaylor:

I don't know the answer to your specific question, but I had a claim denied as the item was visible, just so you keep that in mind. Cheers.

In reply to Roberttaylor:
Don't know about holiday or travel insurance policies, but I went with home contents insurance to get cover in vehicles. Some home content insurers cover this if you have specified this on your policy and have items out of sight in a locked vehicle when unattended.

I've got this type of cover for stuff left in car in the UK, but my policy also specifes abroad for x days per year. Never had to claim fortunately so no idea if they would actually pay out without a hassle.

Note that most insurers will have a relatively low cover limit unless you specify a higher one. Of the ones I checked, some have quite unworkable restrictions or limitations for cover in unattended vehicle if at all or for only a token amount of the amount insured for when you are present, so you need to check policies small print with care. All specify out of sight and locked in boot that I've seen.

In reply to Roberttaylor:
BMC Insurance will cover the stuff providing it's locked in the boot and not visible. However, if kit is stolen you'll have to prove there was forced entry to the boot/car. A lot of other providers will insist on this.

FWIW, we had our hire car broken into in Tenerife and lost all our climbing gear including a camera + phone. It was locked in the boot and out of sight. We left the car for less than 30 minutes in Decathlon's car park about 20-30m from the main escalators into the shop. No damage was done to the car and the police didn't seem surprised by this, in fact they seemed very happy we still had our wallets and passports. It seemed a common problem and that thieves often liberated folks arriving from the airport of *all* their luggage from the car when they stopped at a supermarket en-route to their resort. We spent the remainder of the holiday carrying out wallet/passport etc about our person at all times, leaving the parcel shelf up and leaving nothing in the car whatsoever.

We were insured by Snowcard who unlike the BMC don't appear to insist on forced entry to the boot/vehicle. Snowcard were absolutely brilliant. They paid out quickly and although we lost a wee bit through depreciation etc I think we probably got 90% of what we claimed back. Assuming our experience with the claims process was normal I'd have no issues recommending them. Filling out the forms etc took a while and we did need to provide receipts or failing that photos of the gear we'd lost being used. Now I keep receipts for everything just in case.

One thing worth mentioning is that we'd increased our cover for sporting gear etc from the basic amounts. Ironically, this was mostly to cover the nightmare of your bag not arriving from a flight or whatever so I'd worked out roughly what I thought it would cost to replace say our climbing gear or ski touring stuff and basically made sure we were covered sufficiently. In retrospect, I'm so glad I did this as had I not paid the extra premium for this we'd have been significantly out of pocket.

I guess you have to weigh up the premiums etc against risk etc and decide what you're happy with.

In reply to Roberttaylor:

Another vote for adding "All Risks" to your home insurance.

I've paid extra for this for years, its quite economical and the peace of mind is really worth it. Only had to claim once when the car was broken into under St Baume in France while we saw it happen from about 500m away halfway up a route...