Seven reasons why we've declined claims, so it doesn't happen to you

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Insurance companies occasionally get accused of trying “wriggle out” of paying claims often based on “the small print”, but this is generally unfair. The truth is that we have a legal responsibility to enforce the terms of your policy. If a customer’s bike gets stolen because they haven’t locked it properly, our hands are tied. These aren’t just “small print” details; they’re the actual conditions of your cover, which we make as clear as possible.

Have no doubt though; if your bike is stolen, we absolutely want to pay out on your claim. From a business perspective, we want you to tell all of your friends how wonderful we are so they buy our insurance. From a human perspective, we’re people too and have genuine sympathy for our customers. If we get a call from an upset customer because they’ve had their bike stolen and claim declined, it can have a real, negative effect on the whole office.

Thankfully the vast majority of our claims get approved without any issues. If every customer read and avoided these seven common issues however, we’d probably be able to approve nearly all of them.

1. Your bike lock wasn’t good enough

Bike locks come in all shapes and sizes, but this is an occasion where choice is not necessarily a good thing. That £5 lock from Poundstretcher? Throw it in the bin. It is so easy to break that you might as well not bother.

We cannot possibly test every lock ourselves, so we rely on a third party called Sold Secure to rate bicycle locks on our behalf. The vast majority of bicycle locks will have been rated by them, and given a score of Bronze, Silver, Gold or Diamond

If your bike is worth £1500 or more and you are leaving it unattended, you must use a Sold Secure Gold or Diamond rated bicycle lock. If your bike is worth less than £1500, you can use a Sold Secure Silver rated bicycle lock. You can read more on how to lock your bicycle correctly in our security guide

In addition to making sure you have the correct lock, it’s also really important that you retain your lock receipt. If you no longer have your receipt, please email our customer support team who will help you out

2. Your D-lock came with a cable, and you used this to secure your bike

Plenty of good quality D-locks come with an additional flexible cable. In every example we have seen the D-lock will be rated Gold or Silver, but the cable will not have a rating. It is not intended to secure your bike and only offers very basic security. Frustratingly, the lock manufacturers do not always make this clear enough on their packaging. I’ll say it again-Accessory cables are not Sold Secure rated!!!

Fortunately we only see this about once per year, but if you wrap the cable around your bike then use the d-lock to shackle the cable to the wall, your bike is not covered for theft. You haven’t secured the bike through the frame to an immovable object with a Sold Secure rated lock.

3. You couldn’t provide proof of your purchase receipts

Yellow Jersey insures bikes on a zero depreciation basis, which we think is awesome. It means that if you bought the bike 3 years ago for, let’s say, £3000, we would continue to insure it for that value, indefinitely, regardless of its age and condition. Pretty cool. However, in order for us to operate like this, it is absolutely imperative that you are able to prove how much you paid for your bicycle (plus its upgrades) by providing us with your receipts. In order to take out a policy, you don’t need to send us all of your receipts as that’d be super annoying, but we do clearly ask that in the event of a claim you’re able to provide us with your receipts. This also goes for your lock receipts.

4. Your bike was “abandoned”

“Abandonment” is a clause in most home and bicycle insurance policy wordings, and defines how long you are allowed to leave your bike locked up somewhere. Our underwriter is worried that a bike locked up on the street for several days at a time will become a target for thieves, and so they limit how long you can do this.

Your bike is covered away from your insured location (your home, hotel room, or private office) while properly locked to an immovable object or on a vehicle for up to 12 hours at a time. After 12 hours, the bike has been abandoned and is not covered anymore.

If you need more than 12 hours of coverage, why not go for Ultimate Insurance, which gives you up to 18 hours away from an insured location.

5. You under-insured your bike

Although this won’t lead to your claim being declined, it’s a tricky one, and can lead to real headaches for our claims team as your claim payment may well be reduced. The general rule is your bike should be insured for the price you paid, including any upgraded components and wheel-sets. If you’ve under-insured your bike, it is easy to pop onto our website, log-in, and make a change to your bike value. Remember, always insure your bicycle for the price paid plus its upgrades.

An example would be a customer who has insured their bike for £1500, and is claiming £1200 for some damaged wheels. They haven’t put a pair of £1200 wheels on a £300 bike, but under-insured the bike. In this instance we would have to look at whether the wheels were insured at all, or if just part of their value was insured. In either case, the customer isn’t going to get all their money back, and they are going to be unhappy.

6. You didn’t choose the correct level of cover

We understand that everyone’s needs are different, and a one-size-fits-all policy doesn’t really work that well when it comes to insurance. That’s why we offer three distinct tiers of insurance: Essentials, Performance and Ultimate. It means that you only pay for the cover you need but it’s important that the policy you choose is adequate for the type of cycling you’re taking part in.

Only need cover within the UK for commutting back and forth to work? Essentials will do the trick. Got a sportive in Europe coming up? Performance is what you need. Taking part in bike race or going further afield than Europe, you’ll be needing Ultimate cover… You get the idea!

7. we don’t cover wear and tear or non-incident-related damage

Bicycle damage as a result of a crash is almost inevitable and we’re here to get your bike fixed up and back to how it was before your accident.

But with the cost of bicycle components only ever getting more expensive, we are finding an increasing number of claims being submitted for non-accident related damage for parts which are either clearly worn out, have nothing to do with the incident itself, or most commonly, bicycles which have just failed without any incident.

Much like car insurance, our policies are not designed to cover frame or component failure which has arisen from normal use. If a component has simply just failed, please consult the manufacturer first.