Home contents insurance and second-hand guitars

itm2

I'm an amateur musician, and have 6 guitars. One of them is probably worth around £1,500. The others £250-500 each. All but one were bought second hand - in a couple of cases more than 40 years ago.The guitars are never taken away from the home.
I'm concerned about what would happen in the event of theft, as my experience of insurtance companies is that they require a receipt to be produced for any item listed in a claim. In the case of my guitars I only have a receipt for the one which was bought new (about 10 years ago).
Does anyone have any advice for how I ensure that they are properly protected from theft? e.g. would photos with serial numbers be adequate proof of value in the event of a claim?

DullGreyGuy

Insurers will start with asking for receipts but it's not the only thing thats acceptable and insurers are reasonable that people dont keep every receipt for every item they own indefinitely. Even if they did many receipts are printed on thermal paper and become unreadable after a few years. 

Insurers therefore start with the basics... does it sound plausible that this person owned a £30,000 watch that they bought 3 years ago? Does it tie in with their lifestyle and earnings? Did they say they got a large inheritance and bought their dream item? Is it one of a dozen such watches they own or the only one? Ultimately, does it feel legit. 

If you lost one of your mid value guitars in a theft but the others are untouched it's a much easier claim to make than if you claim they stole all your guitars, amps and ever piece of musical instrument equipment you own but didnt take anything else. 

Photos are good evidence too, ideally however this should be 2 distinct types... one set that have explicitly been taken to document precisely what the guitars are, serial numbers etc and then the second set that should be through the years of ownership of casual photos, maybe you playing them or maybe them hanging on the wall behind you etc. Again it comes down to plausibility... someone claims for their £10,000 engagement ring which they were given in 1990 however only have photos that looks like screen grabs from a website and one photo from last week which vaguely looks like it could be the ring on her hand... why is there not a single photo in the other 34 years? Maybe as they never owned it and just took a photo of trying something on in a jewellery shop last week?

Anything else that goes with the item can also help like original cases, boxes or manuals etc. Again nothing is prescribed as being necessary but it all helps build weight that you owned the item... my wife's Faith guitar has the model on the case, you can't buy that case otherwise (at least not as a regular sale) as the regular case is very similar but doesn't have the model name on it. 

Rodders53

Ask your Insurance Company?  THEY will know what they would want.

Do not rely on advice from random people on the internet.

amanda1024

I’ve definitely had the experience of having insurance only pay out on things I had receipts for. My car was stolen, and although this theoretically included £150 for car contents, and I had at least £150 of music CDs, and even still had most of the empty cases, the insurance wouldn’t pay out for the contents (they paid out for the car itself since obviously I had the paperwork). Many of the CDs were a decade or two old so there was no way I’d have kept the receipts. I know you can get specific insurance for musical instruments and that might be worth looking into.

DullGreyGuy

amanda1024 said:

I’ve definitely had the experience of having insurance only pay out on things I had receipts for. My car was stolen, and although this theoretically included £150 for car contents, and I had at least £150 of music CDs, and even still had most of the empty cases, the insurance wouldn’t pay out for the contents (they paid out for the car itself since obviously I had the paperwork). Many of the CDs were a decade or two old so there was no way I’d have kept the receipts. I know you can get specific insurance for musical instruments and that might be worth looking into.

Motor is very different to Home on a number of levels. Home often have to deal with cases where a whole house, including all the receipts, has burned to ash... do you think the ombudsman would look favourably on an insurer saying they won't pay out anything on a £100,000 contents policy because all the receipts were lost in the fire?


My experience of a Motor Theft claim was much better, I simply showed there was a 8 CD changer in the car and its cartridge had been stolen with 8 CDs at £10 each (or whatever it was) and was paid out without providing any evidence beyond that.


You can get specific musical instrument insurance but the items still need to be factored into the Home insurance and so you effectively end up paying twice for them whilst they are in the home. You would still have similar issues on claiming for the in the event of a loss other than you've just switched which insurer you are claiming from. There maybe guaranteed value policies out there but they are more likely aimed at those with a Stadivari violin or a Steinway piano and the policy cost reflects the time/effort of coming up with an agreed valuation to start with.

itm2

Thanks for the feedback. I've made 3 claims for theft on travel insurance in the last 35 years, and in all 3 cases they would not reimburse me for anything that I couldn't provide a receipt for - including regular-priced shirts, trousers and socks in an overnight bag which was stolen from the boot of my rental car in the USA!

Featuring the guitars in "casual" photos around the home sounds like a good thing to do. As I often switch to the best priced insurer every year it would be difficult to keep track of the attitude my current insurer to this sort of thing. I suppose I could routinely ask every insurer this question every time I take out a policy with them?

daveyjp

I once had a colleague whose husband was a guitar collector, the collection was valued at £50k about 20 years ago.

She had valuation reports prepared for each one for insurance purposes.

DullGreyGuy

itm2 said:

Thanks for the feedback. I've made 3 claims for theft on travel insurance in the last 35 years, and in all 3 cases they would not reimburse me for anything that I couldn't provide a receipt for - including regular-priced shirts, trousers and socks in an overnight bag which was stolen from the boot of my rental car in the USA!

Featuring the guitars in "casual" photos around the home sounds like a good thing to do. As I often switch to the best priced insurer every year it would be difficult to keep track of the attitude my current insurer to this sort of thing. I suppose I could routinely ask every insurer this question every time I take out a policy with them?

To follow Amanda's advice you'd have to ask each time you switch insurer and arguably each year you renewed in case they've changed their policy. 

In reality the sales guy is going to have no idea of the answer and either 1) tell you to speak to claims but then the FNOL person is only fractionally more trained or 2) take a stab at an answer on something they've never been trained on. Technically these things dont really matter, if you've been told it by their staff it's hard for them not to have to honour it at a later date but then you are talking about a complaint etc. 

If you are starting to own things that are important to you then you may want to start considering policies that represent the best value rather than lowest price. The easiest way to make insurance cheap is to have restrictive terms and apply them strictly. Cheap insurance becomes very expensive when you have claims declined etc

itm2

DullGreyGuy said:

itm2 said:

Thanks for the feedback. I've made 3 claims for theft on travel insurance in the last 35 years, and in all 3 cases they would not reimburse me for anything that I couldn't provide a receipt for - including regular-priced shirts, trousers and socks in an overnight bag which was stolen from the boot of my rental car in the USA!

Featuring the guitars in "casual" photos around the home sounds like a good thing to do. As I often switch to the best priced insurer every year it would be difficult to keep track of the attitude my current insurer to this sort of thing. I suppose I could routinely ask every insurer this question every time I take out a policy with them?

To follow Amanda's advice you'd have to ask each time you switch insurer and arguably each year you renewed in case they've changed their policy. 

In reality the sales guy is going to have no idea of the answer and either 1) tell you to speak to claims but then the FNOL person is only fractionally more trained or 2) take a stab at an answer on something they've never been trained on. Technically these things dont really matter, if you've been told it by their staff it's hard for them not to have to honour it at a later date but then you are talking about a complaint etc. 

If you are starting to own things that are important to you then you may want to start considering policies that represent the best value rather than lowest price. The easiest way to make insurance cheap is to have restrictive terms and apply them strictly. Cheap insurance becomes very expensive when you have claims declined etc

Yes I suspect I would struggle to get a definitive answer from an insurer, as you say.

I tend to buy insurance from well established companies (the ones offering the best price). How would I know that "expensive" insurance would be any more likely to honour honest claims? There are all sorts of reasons that one insurer may charge more than another. 

DullGreyGuy

itm2 said:

DullGreyGuy said:

itm2 said:

Thanks for the feedback. I've made 3 claims for theft on travel insurance in the last 35 years, and in all 3 cases they would not reimburse me for anything that I couldn't provide a receipt for - including regular-priced shirts, trousers and socks in an overnight bag which was stolen from the boot of my rental car in the USA!

Featuring the guitars in "casual" photos around the home sounds like a good thing to do. As I often switch to the best priced insurer every year it would be difficult to keep track of the attitude my current insurer to this sort of thing. I suppose I could routinely ask every insurer this question every time I take out a policy with them?

To follow Amanda's advice you'd have to ask each time you switch insurer and arguably each year you renewed in case they've changed their policy. 

In reality the sales guy is going to have no idea of the answer and either 1) tell you to speak to claims but then the FNOL person is only fractionally more trained or 2) take a stab at an answer on something they've never been trained on. Technically these things dont really matter, if you've been told it by their staff it's hard for them not to have to honour it at a later date but then you are talking about a complaint etc. 

If you are starting to own things that are important to you then you may want to start considering policies that represent the best value rather than lowest price. The easiest way to make insurance cheap is to have restrictive terms and apply them strictly. Cheap insurance becomes very expensive when you have claims declined etc

Yes I suspect I would struggle to get a definitive answer from an insurer, as you say.

I tend to buy insurance from well established companies (the ones offering the best price). How would I know that "expensive" insurance would be any more likely to honour honest claims? There are all sorts of reasons that one insurer may charge more than another. 

And if you dont fit the target market for a particular brand they may load the price to discourage you from buying so price alone certainly isn't the way forward. 

The one thing you can check is the policy wording... does it have trace and access, matching sets, a decent single article limit etc, these tend to suggest a higher quality policy. Ultimately you can only ever expect the insurer to do what the policy says. 

There are insurers aimed at a higher end customer like Hiscox, NFU etc and therefore tend to give better service. However the giants likes of Aviva offer the full spectrum from the cheap and cheerful budget policies right up to high net worth for contents over £500,000 etc.