Home Owners Insurance For Electronics

[Robert D]

I'm wondering what you guys do for your insurance. I've been worried about power surges because our electric has been going off then back on, typical lights flicker and resets the home theater power and clocks. I've got Duke Energy coming out to look at it.

So we are covered for $370,000 contents in the home, but I'm getting a call back later to see if our policy has a max limit on electronics thats a lot lower. The agent says many policies do and she has to look into it for me.

Does your policy have a limit, and if it does, what do you do about it? She said I'd need to schedule it with its own coverage if I do have a max limit on electronics.

Another question, has anyone had to file a claim with insurance to replace an audio component? Wondering how it worked out for you. I have a replacement value policy, so its supposed to pay me enough to go out and buy new. I've got an amp that I bought new for $4400 8 years ago but now it costs $14,000. Wondering if anyone here has had that happen. The agent wasn't 100% sure what the insurance would do for me but thinks it should reimburse me $14,000 once I provide them with a purchase receipt.

How about something like my Prodigy speakers. I bought those used for about $3000 8 years ago. If those got destroyed by a surge or stolen, how would I get reimbursed for those? I'm assuming I'd not get $25,000 to go out and buy a new pair of ML 15a's. I don't even have a receipt for what I paid for them. I do have records for when i replaced the panels. I figure with a site like this, there must be a few people that have had to deal with a situation like that.

I like to sit around and worry about crap like this and it gives me anxiety,lol.

 

[Robert D]

For protection at home I have Strike Stop, a whole house surge suppressor, that's installed on the meter for our home where the main power line comes in. I also have my home theater components all plugged into a decent Furman power conditioner.

 

[rimajon]

I had this very scenario a few weeks ago, to be clear I live in the UK. After studying my insurance policy I couldn't clearly identify exactly what was covered, in terms of my HiFi system I have upgraded a lot of components over the past couple of years so I thought it was time to get in touch with my insurers.

I was shocked to find that I only had cover of £7k for my HiFi. The insurance company were very helpful and made enquiries with the loss adjuster and came up with a modified contents policy that included new for old replacement cover, that is to say irrespective of the age of any component in the event of it's loss it would be replaced with a brand new unit of the same quality.

Of course with older components no longer in production this could potentially lead to some interesting discussions with the loss adjustors. This cover came at a price, adding about 20% to my household insurance premium, but I now have peace of mind, I have more than sufficient cover to replace a single component or indeed the entire system in pretty much every event I could envisage, but of course you can't cover every scenario

 

[Robert D]

I had this very scenario a few weeks ago, to be clear I live in the UK. After studying my insurance policy I couldn't clearly identify exactly what was covered, in terms of my HiFi system I have upgraded a lot of components over the past couple of years so I thought it was time to get in touch with my insurers.

I was shocked to find that I only had cover of £7k for my HiFi. The insurance company were very helpful and made enquiries with the loss adjuster and came up with a modified contents policy that included new for old replacement cover, that is to say irrespective of the age of any component in the event of it's loss it would be replaced with a brand new unit of the same quality.

Of course with older components no longer in production this could potentially lead to some interesting discussions with the loss adjustors. This cover came at a price, adding about 20% to my household insurance premium, but I now have peace of mind, I have more than sufficient cover to replace a single component or indeed the entire system in pretty much every event I could envisage, but of course you can't cover every scenario

thanks. I havent heard back from my agent yet, so Im not sure if mine has a limit on electronics or not but Im going to guess that is is probably similar to your's. I think a lot of the members here need to look at this. My biggest fear is a really bad power surge that somehow gets through my Strike stop protector and my Furman power conditioner.

I will talk to the insurance agency tomorrow and see if she was able to figure this out. I have not called the actual company yet, because she will probably do that for me and save me the headache. Its nice having an agency handle things for me. I will call the actual company if I have to.

We already have scheduled my wife's engagement/wedding rings, and I suspect it is something similar to that. That coverage is nice because the rings are covered even outside the home, anywhere we are and if they get lost or a diamond falls out.

That coverage you have that give you a brand new equivalent in case of loss of your stereo components is exactly what I want. My fear would be that my Prodigy speakers get fried bad and then I have to go out and replace them on my own. Im not sure what they would do for me. I think the equivalent of the Prodigy speakers would be the 15a?

Im also not sure how likely it is that you can repair audio components after a power surge fries them. Cost and ability to get them fixed properly. It must be a problem solving nightmare to figure out whats bad and whats good, the cost would probably be astronomical in labor.

An extra 20% would be well worth the piece of mind to me. The power surge thing could happen, I doubt other things like fire or theft would occur but you never know. About 10 years ago lightning struck my neighbor's tree and the surge took out one of my desktop PCs and also our home alarm system board. It also fried the modem on my gaming pc's motherboard, so I was able to fix that by just buying an add on modem and plugging that in. I have a feeling the surge came in through the cable since it is underground. It must have traveled through the ethernet. Luckily those were the only things I lost. After that we got Strike Stop for the house and now I have the power conditioner for the home theater.

 

[rimajon]

Power surges are always a worry, I have an Isotek Titan Power Conditioner, Isotek claim it will protect against all potential power overloads, I certainly hope so, thankfully we have a relatively stable power supply in my area.

One of the questions asked by the loss adjustor, will any of the HIFi components be used outside of the home?, I understand that had any of the components been portable it would have increased the cost of the premium quite significantly.

All of my components are currently still in production, I have the ML Classic 9's, but I'm considering upgrading to either the 11A or 13A at some point, at present the ML 9's supported by a pair of REL S510' sub's are really offering up the best sounding speakers I've owned and they do say :"if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it", so who knows?, the pursuit of better musical reproduction is very addictive

 

[Robert D]

Power surges are always a worry, I have an Isotek Titan Power Conditioner, Isotek claim it will protect against all potential power overloads, I certainly hope so, thankfully we have a relatively stable power supply in my area.

One of the questions asked by the loss adjustor, will any of the HIFi components be used outside of the home?, I understand that had any of the components been portable it would have increased the cost of the premium quite significantly.

All of my components are currently still in production, I have the ML Classic 9's, but I'm considering upgrading to either the 11A or 13A at some point, at present the ML 9's supported by a pair of REL S510' sub's are really offering up the best sounding speakers I've owned and they do say :"if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it", so who knows?, the pursuit of better musical reproduction is very addictive

Are the prices for new Martin Logans in the UK much higher than the prices on their website here in the US? We have a thread on here that's started by a member from Australia and their prices are insane. I guess I'm spoiled living in the US.

 

[rimajon]

At the moment the full retail for the Classic 9 is £7,990, the 11A £12,990 and the 13A £17990, I think the current exchange rate equates to about $1.30 to the British pound.
Most retailers offer a discount for a non part exchange deal, I got close to 15% off my 9's. I think the lack of popularity stems from the smaller square footage of the average UK home when compared to the average home in the US, the Logan's require space.

Strangely ML's are not that popular here in the UK, you just don't see many modern Logan's on the used market. If you're lucky enough to find a pair then they generally don't command great prices. When I asked my retailer about use 11A's and 13A's, he told me he just never has them offered to him, I suspect the ML owners in the UK are pretty loyal.

 

[Robert D]

At the moment the full retail for the Classic 9 is £7,990, the 11A £12,990 and the 13A £17990, I think the current exchange rate equates to about $1.30 to the British pound.
Most retailers offer a discount for a non part exchange deal, I got close to 15% off my 9's. I think the lack of popularity stems from the smaller square footage of the average UK home when compared to the average home in the US, the Logan's require space.

Strangely ML's are not that popular here in the UK, you just don't see many modern Logan's on the used market. If you're lucky enough to find a pair then they generally don't command great prices. When I asked my retailer about use 11A's and 13A's, he told me he just never has them offered to him, I suspect the ML owners in the UK are pretty loyal.

Ok, so basically the price there is marked up 30%, because the number value is about the same. One is in US dollars and the other British Pounds. The actual math works out to almost 42% markup. I think Australia is a lot higher.

 

[rimajon]

Mark up is a relative description in this case, we have a tax over here called vat,(value added tax), basically this tax is charged on pretty much every product sold in the UK and is charged at 20%. The UK retail price already has this tax factored in, so the retailer is responsible for charging this tax to the customer and passing this tax onto the UK Revenue, hence the retailers profit margins are not as profitable as may appear at first sight.

Take the 11a for example, retail price in the UK £12,990 including value added tax, hence the basic price without the tax is around £10,750 and this is the figure that the retailer has to work out his margins, I'm not saying the UK retailers don't have a decent percentage, but our tax system has to be taken into account.

 

[Robert D]

Mark up is a relative description in this case, we have a tax over here called vat,(value added tax), basically this tax is charged on pretty much every product sold in the UK and is charged at 20%. The UK retail price already has this tax factored in, so the retailer is responsible for charging this tax to the customer and passing this tax onto the UK Revenue, hence the retailers profit margins are not as profitable as may appear at first sight.

Take the 11a for example, retail price in the UK £12,990 including value added tax, hence the basic price without the tax is around £10,750 and this is the figure that the retailer has to work out his margins, I'm not saying the UK retailers don't have a decent percentage, but our tax system has to be taken into account.

Oh yeah, I figured that. The tax in Australia must be even higher. I'm glad we don't have tax like that here in the US. We just pay local tax which is about 6.5% in most places.

Do you also have a local tax you have to pay in addition to the VAT?