Bird Books and Home Insurance (1 Viewer)

[Corax67]

HAd a frustrating couple of weeks trying to find my copy of Macmillan Field Guide to Bird Identification following a "tidy up" of my car boot.

Got so bad I was even looking for a replacement but shocked by the £50+ prices on Amazon and eBay.

During this search though I also began to note the cost of replacing some of my other stuff on Amazon -

New Naturalist, British Warblers - £650
Age & Moult of Passerines - £220
EBCC Atlas of Breeding Birds - £65

In view of this I am starting to worry about what would happen in the event of a fire - firstly can I remember all the books I have and secondly how on earth do I prove I had a copy of a book I bought 20 years ago for £30 that now costs over 20 times as much to replace.

Has anyone else thought about this at all?

Is there an easy solution that I am just not seeing?

 

[MSA]

If you're really worried, ring your insurers and ask them what they suggest (but don't have a fire in the next few days !).

Personally, I'd take digital photos of the actual items and keep a backup at parents/work/elsewhere, maybe also copies of receipts.

 

[Marmot]

Give your insurers a ring. When you think it is probably no different to having certain items of jewelery that are worth quite a bit. But make a list before you ring them.

We actually did it for all Ian's camera equipment on the "contents" of the insurance as named items. I think it costs us about £30 a year more for this.

 

[nickderry]

check some of those price again on Amazon, I had a bit of an internet spending spree and was quite shocked by some of the prices, turns out that some of those books are shipped from the US, and can be found for a lot cheaper on the same site.

 

[Corax67]

Well I rang the insurers and am now even more worried than before.

I have Extended Contents Insurance with specified items - that is I have listed my camera, lenses, scope & bins, etc so the are covered outside the house and this works fine as I lost a lens over a cliff off Skomer a couple of years back and they paid out fine.

The problem comes with proving I purchased all my books - with the lens I still had the original boxes which I sent off as proof of purchase but I certainly don't have receipts for my books (or DVD's & CD's for that matter).

I suggested photo's to the call centre but they were very "um . . . er" about whether this would be acceptable.

Any other ideas ? ? ? ? ?

 

[Twite]

You could try contacting another insurance company, listing all you want to insure. If they are prepared to cover everything you want insured, you can then contact your present insurer and tell them you can get the required cover elsewhere and will cancel your policy with them if they aren't going to cover your books. They will most likely cover your books rather than lose you to another company.

Twite.