The ABCs of insuring your Bowie Move

One of the most difficult aspects of planning a move is the fact that most of your belongings quite simply weren’t designed to be moved. A lot of household belongings are fragile or unwieldy or both. Moving always poses a risk to your often hard earned possessions. That is why moving insurance in some form is neither simply a perk nor a convenience, it is a necessity.

The sheer inconvenience of moving has most people choosing to hire Bowie moving companies when moving within or away from Bowie, as opposed to moving themselves. To a professional Bowie mover, moving is a craft to be studied, practiced and honed to perfection with years of experience. However, despite the experience and the professionalism that moving companies in Bowie posses, moving always means a risk to your belongings and ultimately to you; and moving insurance is vital. It is also vital to choose your insurance based on what gives you the best balance of protection, convenience, and affordability.

If your belongings consist mostly of old furniture which you really don’t have a particular attachment to other than the fact that all of the items serve some utilitarian purpose; and the distance you will be moving is within or Bowie or Maryland, you may not need more than basic liability coverage. Basic liability provides you with protection based on the weight of your shipment. For each item the mover losses or damages, they will pay you $.30 to $.60 cents per pound of the weight of the item depending on the distance of the move. The upside is that basic liability coverage is given at no extra charge. If you aren’t moving anything irreplaceable or valuable to you, then basic liability should more than suffice.

You probably won’t lose any sleep over getting paid $3.00 should your mover damage an ugly old kitchen chair. If on the other hand your mover damages a two and a half pound DVD player and winds up paying you seventy five cents for it, it might make you quite upset. So if you are on a budget but have some cargo that causes you some consternation, you may opt to declare the value of some of your items. In the event that those items are damaged or lost, you will get paid according to the value declared. Declared value coverage is a mode of basic liability and thus comes with no extra cost. There is a catch though: you and the mover must agree on the value of the item, or it will not be declared on the bill of lading. Declared value often means depreciated value, and often, third party appraisers are needed to settle disagreements on a lot of items. This does require additional money.

For moving a lot of items with relatively high values, you will want the substantial protection offered by replacement value coverage. Replacement value coverage is not free of charge, and by law, it cannot be sold by your Bowie moving company. Under replacement value coverage, you will be compensated for according to how much it will cost to replace your lost or damaged item with a comparable new one. Instead of getting seventy fives cents for your lost DVD player under basic liability or $25 after declaring the value of your 2 year old DVD player, you will be given $85 to buy a new DVD player.

A move is a risk you take for the promise of greater reward. A professional Bowie moving company can help you minimize that risk greatly. Still, no matter how you look at it, insurance is an indispensable part of your moving experience. Make sure you choose wisely.