Guys thanks for all the responses, yes the bike was keyless. I guess they wheeled it into a big van and away, they took all my luggage, tank bag, sat nav and old crash helmet.
My panniers were sat on a shelf full of my winter gear and wet weather stuff and top box with gloves moulded earplugs etc. so I'm absolutely cleaned out.
To make things worse I had half my work kit in there such as various battery drills with all sorts of attachments and they took all of that as well
Insurance don't want to know as it wasn't in the van and house insurance says I'm not covered for stuff in the garage.
To say I'm pissed is an understatement, I would just love to catch hold of the bastards and take a hammer to them.
This is theft on a grand scale, upsetting not so much for the loss of the motorbike (that happens quite regularly and under all sorts of circumstances) but for the loss of all the other items up to and including work tools.
Whilst it easy to maybe criticise insurers for not insuring items and / or not insuring some items under some circumstances, it does highlight the need to check the policies to make sure bods really are buying the cover that suits them best. Too often it's just too easy to buy the cheapest policy and hope to luck, a tactic (as theft on a grand scale is actually quite rare) that works well most of the time but is exposed as useless when it does happen.
Everyone reading this thread should take five minutes to look at their lives and work out if they too are exposed in the same way. It's Saturday morning, do it some time over this weekend, please.
1. Do you have (possibly expensive) motorcycling gear which you keep in your garage, as opposed to in a cupboard, wardrobe or room in your house? I do. Is your garage integral with the house? Mine is. Is theft from your garage covered? Is theft from your garage covered if it is not integral with the house covered? Is theft from a shed covered? Do you keep your gear and maybe your bike in a shed as opposed to a garage? Do your policies treat a shed the same as a garage or differently?
Is your motorcycling gear even properly insured at all or are you relying on that free very limited extension under your dirt cheap Motor policy - sold to you by some call centre chimp, who you didn't listen to as it was boring - which might (if you are very lucky) give you some very limited cover if you are unlucky enough to tumble off your motorbike, which you don't do very often?
2. Tools. Do you have (possibly expensive) tools in your garage, house, shed, work van, under the bed? I do. Are they covered under your policies? If so, how and when? Does your policy cover work or trade tools? Do your policies cover tools at all?
3. Can you even prove that you actually owned any of the items you claim to have lost?
Simple enough questions to ask yourself today,
before anything has happened and questions that you and / or your insurers, plural (as several policies might be involved) will be asking
after the event.
It is possible to buy good insurance that will cover all / most of the circumstances above. Do most bog standard off the shelf very cheap policies cover all the circumstances? No. Why? It's quite simple. Most policies are sold to the lowest common denominator of bod on the average street and they, quite understandably, want to buy it cheap. So it is sold cheap. Very few bods own motorcycles, the panniers, the expensive gear that goes with motorcycling (like GPS devices, Go-Pro cameras, helmets, clothing, boots) and very few own tools (work or otherwise) beyond a bent screwdriver and a rusty hammer. So, the average cheap policy sold to the average bod works just fine.
But you are not the average bod on the street. You are a biker and you are very different to the average bod on the street as you have all the bells and whistles and maybe more. So buy insurance that best suits you, not your very dull neighbour from two doors down the road in Northampton or Hull or very nice London SW1 or wherever it is you live. Line up all your expensive and extensive items and take photographs of the lot. You take pictures of your bike (some even take pictures of its tyres, for feck's sake) to share with likeminded souls every five minutes, so take half an hour to photograph all that really expensive to replace stuff that might well get stolen and for which you quite understandably no longer have the receipt. Save the pictures somewhere safe and repeat the operation once in a while. Not every five minutes, that is when you photograph your steed, mate. Whist you are at it, look at all the other things you own, like that brand new smart telly you have treated yourself to for £1,500 and the boy's new Mac and SWMBO's eternity ring you spent two months wages on but then forgot to insure at all..... I have been nagging my daughter to insure her £5000 Rolex (bought out of a legacy from her grandfather on his death) for months now, so I know how things get passed over but then regretted later.
Yes, it may cost you more to insure and it may well cost you some shopping around effort to do it properly. But a penny to a pound says that you (just as the OP might now be doing) will wish that you'd spent maybe more to insure your £1000 Ruka suit, your £300 helmet, your two pairs of gloves for winter and summer at £150, the Navigator V £500, your £200 worth of tools (that was just the spanners by the way) that you do (or maybe not) use as a part of your trade, as opposed to just twiddling with at weekends. That very short list came to £2,150 and I didn't even try, so don't forget to add your Go-Pro or your brand new Daytona boots and in-ear monitors, too. In other words, I was well
under what you maybe do have piled up and very probably not have insured properly or not insured at all. I wonder if the OP might gladly pay £200 now today, to get his work tools, panniers and winter riding gear back, all paid for by his insurers? I guess, yes. Just as my daughter will wish she'd insured her Rolex she likes so much!
If there is any good to come out of this sorry tale, it's that YOU will not make the same mistakes as the OP.... or will you? The choice as ever is yours. Trust me, they will not chop the hands off the thief if they even catch him. Trust me that bods telling you that they feel sorry for you will not get you any closer to getting your £2,150 paid back, though it might make you feel better. So sort your life out before the shit hits the fan; it could be you next.
