I discovered that while I was overseas for three trips this year, I wasn’t covered if my gear was lost, stolen, or damaged. I thought I had done everything right. I even wrote about it on this blog on how I screwed up.
August 1, 2012 I wrote this in my blog: [Camera Insurance]
Lesson Learned
A few years ago, I read on a photography forum how people were getting great deals through their State Farm Insurance representative. I was with State Farm for my house and cars then, so I called them.
I explained that I do not have a studio, do location work all over the country, and occasionally overseas travel. I got a quote for about 1/3 of what I had been paying. I jumped on that and had the policy for more than two years.
Just change that “State Farm Insurance” to “Allstate Insurance.” The difference in how I got burned this time was that ASMP had listed them as a benefit.
Howard Burkholtz was the representative that I talked with about switching from Tom C. Pickard & Co.
I explained that I travel and do not work out of a brick-and-mortar business. I travel to my clients all over the world.
How it all went wrong
While in Trinidad teaching in the Storytellers Abroad workshop, I got up from my chair, and my foot caught the power cord plugged into HyperDrive – USB Type-C Hub, which also my 4TB Western Digital Hard drive was plugged into. The hard drive went crashing to the floor.
Not everything on the drive was there a second copy of the files. I sent it off to get recovered. I knew that the insurance was supposed to cover this.
Well, I read in the policy they sent me to sign that the limit was $10,000 for data recovery. When I talked to the claims adjuster, they informed me it was only for $5,000.
I discovered that I wasn’t covered as told by the Allstate Representative.
When I just left my house, I was covered only by about 1/2 of the policy I had before. I also discovered that I was not covered at the requested replacement cost.
The worst thing is that I discovered that my camera gear was not covered overseas. I made three trips this year to Peru, Trinidad, and Chile. Had anything been damaged or stolen, I wasn’t covered.
So my coverage with Tom C. Pickard & Co. was around $800 a year. Allstate was initially quoting about $350. When they saw I also did a video that went up to $500.
Howard Burkholtz discovered the problem and was willing to find another policy to cover me as requested. He came back with a price of $1,800.
I canceled their policy and called Tom C. Pickard and company (http://www.tcpinsurance.com/). Allstate refunded me, and the new policy is right back to about $800 a year for all my $45,000 gear.
I learned even the insurance recommended by a professional association like ASMP could be bad for you. I recommend talking to other pros doing similar work as you and finding out what they are using.