Camera Gear insurance?

Who are you using to insure against loss, damage, theft etc?

Completely uninsured. The money I save not buying insurance will come in handy when I actually have a 'situation'.

Package Choice by Hill & Usher

http://www.packagechoi​ce.com

Bassat wrote in post #17756089
Completely uninsured. The money I save not buying insurance will come in handy when I actually have a 'situation'.

It costs a little over $100 year to schedule all of my gear via my homeowners insurance. Coverage applies to all risks of damage or loss inside or outside of my home. A single incident could net a loss of several thousands of dollars. That $100 a year I saved won't do much if I have an actual loss.

mystik610 wrote in post #17756141
It costs a little over $100 year to schedule all of my gear via my homeowners insurance. Coverage applies to all risks of damage or loss inside or outside of my home. A single incident could net a loss of several thousands of dollars. That $100 a year I saved won't do much if I have an actual loss.

does that include liability & all that other fun personal-injury stuff?

one thing though...if you're using your gear for business purposes....i don't think homeowners would cover any claims.

JOSX2 wrote in post #17756155
i don't think homeowners would cover any claims.

I think it depends on the amount of business and if you claim it. there are definitely stipulations.

Self-insured. Like Bassat, I save a ton of money by not insuring photo gear, airline tickets, musical instruments, car rentals, and so on.

Of course I do insure things that I could not easily recover from in case of loss, like my home and car. And I would insure gear too if I thought I was in a high risk situation (but I'm not).

If I lose my camera, that would be a blow, but really, I could go out and buy a replacement. Insurance companies are in business to make money. Buying insurance supports the industry. Therefore on average insurance is a losing proposition for the buyer. When you buy insurance, you will win only if you lose.

So I would suggest buying insurance only if you couldn't easily recover from a loss, if you think you are relatively high-risk, or if you are the really nervous type.

mystik610 wrote in post #17756141
It costs a little over $100 year to schedule all of my gear via my homeowners insurance. Coverage applies to all risks of damage or loss inside or outside of my home. A single incident could net a loss of several thousands of dollars. That $100 a year I saved won't do much if I have an actual loss.

I could insure all of my gear, which comes to about $12,000 worth, against all losses for about $125 per year. That is only part of the cost. Then there is the deductible; standard is $500. I can choose $0, which would cost more, or $1,000 which would cost less. All of that comes out of my pocket in the event of a loss. The last factor is that if I do have a claim, I lose my 'preferred' risk status, which applies to ALL of my insurance: home, cars, truck, motorcycle, farm. It takes 5 claim-free years to get my 'preferred' status back. In the meantime, I pay about $500 per year more for my insurance. That alone costs me $2,500.

If I drop my 6D in the ocean, with the 100-400L attached, I can replace them myself on the used market for less than $2,000. As I rarely leave home with more than two lenses, the chance of losing more equipment than that at one time is extremely remote, let us call it non-existent. The only way I can think of to lose all of my equipment is to a major house fire or home burglary. If my home burns to the ground, the camera stuff will not be at the top of my list of worries.

Total replacement cost, uninsured: replace 6D & 100-400L, about $1900.
Total replacement cost, insured: replace 6D and 100-400L, $500 (deductible) + lets say 10 years of insurance at $125/yr = $1250. Increased insurance costs after making a claim, $2,500.

Results. If I throw my camera in the ocean and go buy replacements myself: $1900.
If I drop it in the ocean and make an insurance claim, that same $1900 camera will cost me: $500+1250+2500 = $4,200.
I don't need insurance that ends up costing me more money than I'd spend without it.

Erie Inland Marine - everything's insured at purchase price. Premium amounts to around 1% of the price, since I also have home, auto, liability, . . . with them.

All of my gear is insured under my homeowners policy for all perils (theft, accidental damage, etc.) with no maximum limit on coverage as long as I am not using my gear professionally.

mystik610 wrote in post #17756141
It costs a little over $100 year to schedule all of my gear via my homeowners insurance. Coverage applies to all risks of damage or loss inside or outside of my home. A single incident could net a loss of several thousands of dollars. That $100 a year I saved won't do much if I have an actual loss.

Are you sure that you are covered. I went to your web site and it sure looks like you have a photo business since you have a client section. My insurance company was ok insuring my gear before I started selling photos. I had to ask multiple times and finally my agent, who really had no idea, asked the company. They said no. And by the way, it does not matter that they take your money, if they figure out, which is not hard, that you are in business they will refuse to pay. I had to go with the Hill & Usher business insurance.

I called my homeowners and for $28 a year extra I have a $1,000 deductible but I am now covered for about 40K in gear

Bassat wrote in post #17756341
I could insure all of my gear, which comes to about $12,000 worth, against all losses for about $125 per year. That is only part of the cost. Then there is the deductible; standard is $500. I can choose $0, which would cost more, or $1,000 which would cost less. All of that comes out of my pocket in the event of a loss. The last factor is that if I do have a claim, I lose my 'preferred' risk status, which applies to ALL of my insurance: home, cars, truck, motorcycle, farm. It takes 5 claim-free years to get my 'preferred' status back. In the meantime, I pay about $500 per year more for my insurance. That alone costs me $2,500.

If I drop my 6D in the ocean, with the 100-400L attached, I can replace them myself on the used market for less than $2,000. As I rarely leave home with more than two lenses, the chance of losing more equipment than that at one time is extremely remote, let us call it non-existent. The only way I can think of to lose all of my equipment is to a major house fire or home burglary. If my home burns to the ground, the camera stuff will not be at the top of my list of worries.

Total replacement cost, uninsured: replace 6D & 100-400L, about $1900.
Total replacement cost, insured: replace 6D and 100-400L, $500 (deductible) + lets say 10 years of insurance at $125/yr = $1250. Increased insurance costs after making a claim, $2,500.

Results. If I throw my camera in the ocean and go buy replacements myself: $1900.
If I drop it in the ocean and make an insurance claim, that same $1900 camera will cost me: $500+1250+2500 = $4,200.
I don't need insurance that ends up costing me more money than I'd spend without it.

You can't really quantify if buying insurance will be a winning or losing proposition without statistically knowing the likelihood of a loss. i.e., if you have $2000 of gear at risk, and you were confident that there is greater than a 6% (125/2000) chance of a total loss in a given year, then it would be statistically a winning proposition to buy insurance. If you're confident that the risk of loss is less than 6%, then it would statistically be losing proposition to buy insurance. I work in finance for an energy company, and while I don't deal with insurance, that's simplified version of the type of analysis that's done in decisions about hedging energy prices (basically insuring our cost of buying gas/power).

Since you don't know the statistical likelihood of having a total loss of your gear, any quantitative analysis is pointless, and the evaluation of whether or not to buy insurance is more of a qualitative decision than anything. If I'm out with my a7rII, and two of my primes, I easily have $5,000+ at risk on a given day, and there's no way of knowing how likely it is that I lose a bag of gear tomorrow.

Sure I could afford to replace anything I lost on a given day, but given that I don't know the statistical likelihood of losing my gear, my super sophisticated analysis is this: it would suck a lot more to spend $5,000 to replace my kit than to tack on $12.50 to my homeowners insurance bill each month

bpalermini wrote in post #17756435
Are you sure that you are covered. I went to your web site and it sure looks like you have a photo business since you have a client section. My insurance company was ok insuring my gear before I started selling photos. I had to ask multiple times and finally my agent, who really had no idea, asked the company. They said no. And by the way, it does not matter that they take your money, if they figure out, which is not hard, that you are in business they will refuse to pay. I had to go with the Hill & Usher business insurance.

When I shot weddings, my then business partner and I split the cost to insure our gear professionally, which is quite a bit more expensive. I took a hiatus from wedding photography when my daughter was born, and don't do much professional work these days. When I do, its simple portrait sessions where I'm in control of my gear the entire time and I'm comfortable self-insuring the risk.

My bigger fear is that my house will get burglarized when I'm not at home, or a bag of gear is stolen when I'm out. I clarified the fact that I occasionally shoot for money with my homeowners insurance broker, and basically, my gear is covered so long as the gear isn't lost or damaged in the course of professional use, or the primary use of my gear is professional. I'm probably going to ramp up shooting professionally again next year, and if/when I get a wedding on the books, I'll probably take out another professional policy.

mystik610 wrote in post #17756939
You can't really quantify if buying insurance will be a winning or losing proposition without statistically knowing the likelihood of a loss. i.e., if you have $2000 of gear at risk, and you were confident that there is greater than a 6% (125/2000) chance of a total loss in a given year, then it would be statistically a winning proposition to buy insurance. If you're confident that the risk of loss is less than 6%, then it would statistically be losing proposition to buy insurance. I work in finance for an energy company, and while I don't deal with insurance, that's simplified version of the type of evaluation that's done in decisions about hedging energy prices (basically insuring our cost of buying gas/power).

Since you don't know the statistically likelihood of having a total loss of your gear, the evaluation of whether or not to buy insurance is more a matter of piece of mind, and its more of a subjective decision. There's no way of knowing how likely it is that I lose a bag of gear tomorrow. If I'm out with my a7rII, and two of my primes, I easily have $5,000+ at risk on a given day. Sure I could afford to replace anything I lost on a given day, but frankly, it would suck a lot more to spend $5,000 to replace my kit than to tack on $12.50 to my homeowners insurance bill each month

...

Yes, you can know enough about the chance of a loss to make an informed decision. It is very simple.
Fact A: Insurance companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. As such,
Fact B: Insurance companies DO know the odds of you having a loss. Therefore,
Fact C: Insurance companies will ALWAYS charge more for premiums than they pay out in claims.
Conclusion:
Fact D: Insurance of any kind is always a losing proposition until you have a loss.

Insurance serves two purposes. Peace of mind and protection from catastrophic loss. I can afford to replace my cameras and guns. No insurance can replace the sentimental value of my wife's jewelry. I have insurance riders for none of that stuff (drives my agent nuts). I could not come up with $400,000 to replace my home, and the mortgage company knows that. It is fully insured, by choice and by law. Since I own a working farm, I carry $1M worth of blanket liability insurance. I protect what I can't afford to lose. A 70D and 18-55 STM does not make the cut.

You are not counting the entire cost of your insurance in the $5,000 vs. $12.50 per month scenario. What is your deductible? Ask you agent what a $5,000 claim will do to your rates. In my case, my home-owners/auto/motorcycle​/blanket coverage will increase by a bit more than $500 per year, for 5 years, if I make a claim. That $2,500 surcharge has to be figured into the cost of any 'free' camera my insurance company may provide for me.

For the sake of reference, I paid about $3,400 for insurance on two cars, a motorcycle, a farm truck, and my home this year.

gqllc007 wrote in post #17756546
I called my homeowners and for $28 a year extra I have a $1,000 deductible but I am now covered for about 40K in gear

That is quite a deal! Care to share the company and your risk rating? I believe there is more to this story.