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Insurance Coverage?

K

Kicker

Well-known member
Based on some threads on the forum and a lightning strike at a neighbor's down the street, I decided I should check with State Farm to make sure my homeowner's policy covered my equipment appropriately.

Sadly, they told me that Kaleidescape falls under "data processing equipment" and as such has a $10k max. I'm wondering about other components as well so I'm going to be building a full inventory of my equipment to send to them for a more complete response.

My question is... What have others done to make sure they have appropriate insurance coverage for K systems or other higher end components? It would really suck to have a disaster strike and find out there was no replacement coverage...
 
I boosted data processing equipment fairly hard. However, I don't really hold my agent to know a K-system from a refrigerator box, so there's always a bit of concern in the back of the mind that should something happen the carrier would say it's AV gear instead of a computer. Something tells me putting it as listed schedule would be safest, but probably costlier and require more management to keep up-to-date.
 
High end insurance underwriters such as Chubb or Pure handle these kinds of values and typically will have higher base coverage to start with. But you will still probably need to put your gear on a schedule to get better coverage limits. I've got over seven figures in my setup and theatre architecture, but my agent has several other clients with more and all are on schedules and most with liberal deductibles. This helps keep the premium down a tad.
 
Even if you verbally negotiate better coverage from your carrier (I did), READ and understand the amended policy, don't trust what your are told verbally by any agent, their words have no value in a dispute, only the policy document decides the outcome.


Jim
 
I have been trying to find this out for a while. I called up my insurance company to have them reevaluate my coverage when I purchased the Ksystem last year and they told me it was part of our personal property coverage. I asked them if they could increase the amount of coverage because if anything ever happened it would only cover the electronics and nothing else, they told me I could but it would double our yearly premium. Which is ridiculously expensive for the amount of extra benefit - the cost definitely didn't equal the benefit (I could replace all of my equipment in less than two years of paying the extra costs in premium, which to me is outrageous). It was like pulling teeth when I asked them and told them why I was looking to increase the benefit. I also looked online for any insurance companies that insured electronic and most of the ones that did only insured companies that used electronic for business and they had no clue what Kaleidescape was.
If anyone else has any experience in this and knows of other ways of insuring in a way that is maximizing the benefit with a reasonable cost please let us know. Thank you for bringing up this subject! Marc
 
My philosophy is that insurance is not a 100% eliminator of risks but rather a safety net to take much of the sting out of a catastrophic loss. They are betting you will not have such a loss, and you are buying a premium to cover your bet that you will. I take a large deductible and invest the cash savings the same way the insurance company would do with a low or zero deductible. Since they have to make a profit, and you don't, it is a better bet for the customer. These guys ain't stupid, so do like Jim says and read the fine print. They run the insurance business like a casino - the house always wins, but at least you can choose to play the game with the best odds.
 
Excellent points, PointMan and Jim. I just got hit, and narrowly escaped with my new server intact. I had to replace an M300, but that's the worst of it as far as I can tell right now. Other than that, I lost a 24 port rackmount switch and some dimmers in my lighting control system. I didn't even turn it in this time.
 
HiFiGuy1 said:
Excellent points, PointMan and Jim. I just got hit, and narrowly escaped with my new server intact. I had to replace an M300, but that's the worst of it as far as I can tell right now. Other than that, I lost a 24 port rackmount switch and some dimmers in my lighting control system. I didn't even turn it in this time.
Click to expand...

If your hit was as bad as mine, you still haven't found all the damage yet.

I kept finding totally stupid shit dead for 3-4 weeks after....like a battery tender. It's a really specialized one for the Braille battery in my Porsche, too. *sigh*

I don't say that because it would change your mind to to do the insurance thing or not, because it's usually all just a few smaller things, but still so friggin' annoying.


--Donnie
 
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