TOPIC:

...& make sure it's insured with the right type of insurance
- I've had 2 bikes theived, didn't get a payout on either
Both were stolen from a locked garage, excuse 1 was "It's not covered by bike insurance cos it's in a garage in your garden, not a garage adjacent to the road" 2nd excuse was "it's not covered by house insurance cos it's in a garage not a shed", 3rd excuse was "It's not covered by house insurance cos it's a road vehicle".

A recent read of one of my insurance documents also revealed that "You can drive someone elses car with their permission, with 3rd party only cover" means "In an emergency only". I rang them to query what's classed as an emergency, they said "exactly that, if the driver becomes ill or injured, you're insured to drive them to hospital in their car, nothing else"

Another hilarious one I discovered is that my car is insured if abandoned outside my house overnight (There's no offroad parking etc), or if it's more than 2 miles away from my house, BUT if I park it across or slightly up the road, it's not covered.... Handy when some dick has decided to use my spot as the pub carpark, I have to wait until they've finished drinking & left so I can move the car back to outside my house

They are sneaky badword badwords, but that really is taking the badword.

HI!... Wow all your insurance companies suck! LOL! My house insurance covers anything and everything on my property. Same company also insures my trucks too. All that bundled together costs me $219 a month though.

Martin wrote:

Insurance companies are sneaky badwords and notorious for doing anything they can to wriggle out of paying out for claims. Make sure that your insurer agrees explicitly, in advance, in writing on the value you have put on your collection. They may be quite happy to charge you a premium for insuring $45k of kit, but may quibble about the "market value" when it comes to making a claim.

I think my situation is similar to THE H.P FREAK. It's covered under house contents insurance, however a few years ago I explicitly told the bank about this collection of toys, and we increased the overall value being insured, to cater for it. I also provided them with a list of the items involved.

Part of the reason I started this topic is because I'm now revisiting the list idea, and making it more detailed. It's also high time I increased the insured value as well, due to many, many, many purchases in the years since.

Being a heavy iPhone user, I've already used specific apps to catalogue things like DVD collections.
So how about using an app to catalogue R/C items?

If you use an iPhone, I would recommend trying this app. Note: I have zero affiliation with the creator. It's made by a woman in the UK, and can be used for any home contents items. However so far, I have found that it works quite well for R/C stuff...

www.curlybrace....econtents/

You can quickly take photos within the app, and then fill out the basic details - make, model and value. You can define them as being stored in particular rooms: bedroom, garage, etc.
You can define categories. My categories are:
R/C Cars - NIB kits
R/C Cars - New Built
R/C Cars - Parts
R/C Cars - Used
R/C Cars - Empty Boxes
Model Kits
Handheld Games
etc

And most importantly, you can generate a report (including thumbnails) of all the items, transfer that to your computer, and print it. It also provides a total value figure.

Once I'm done adding all my items, I'll be giving my insurer a copy of that report as a highly itemized list (thus including photographic proof) of everything.

What do you guys think? I think this is the sort of thing we should all be doing. There may also be other apps out there that you prefer, but today's smartphones make this whole task a lot easier than it was 5+ years ago.

H.

One more very important tip: If you are using any mobile phone to take photos of your cars, be sure to turn off "location services" for photos. If your photos include EXIF data defining the precise location they were take, then you store them in an app - then your phone is stolen, you will be in serious trouble
Also, never post such photos online, obviously.