shop Insurance

[Pam Wedd]

Hi all,
Wondered if any of the full time builders are managing to find business/liability/shop insurance. I haven't have any for the past three years, and now they have cut off my house insurance stating the reason being that the shop is on the same property. Not sure if it is the same for you folks south of the border. I am not sure if I am going to tear my hair out and/or go out of business. Seems like the insurance companies are methodically putting all us small folks out of business.
Thanks.
Pam

 

[DGuertin]

Shop around

I was bidding on a $25,000, one year contract and the government wrote in a new clause whereby the contractor had to have a minimum $1,000,000 liability insurance. I guess this was in case I dropped a computer on someones head and I got sued.

Seems however, that MY insurance was also to add the government as a 2nd insuree so my insurance would cover their court costs in case THEY got sued over something I did.

Now, since I was sub-contracted to do the work for a main contractor, I wasn't covered under the main contractor because I wasn't an "employee" so he also had to have $1,000,000 coverage so the upshot was we both would have had to pay $2,500 per year which worked out to 20% of the total contract price. Make sense?

Another employer found an insurance guy who agreed to cover me for about $250 a year and also agreed it was too much bother to bill me for it!

You are correct in your assessment the insurance companies don't help small business very much and at times follow policies that are downright destructive. Only help I can offer is to suggest, shop around.

(Other than that I might be able to pass you the name of a guy in Kingston, Ontario!)

 

[Pam Wedd]

Dennis, your situation sounds like another insurance nightmare. I don't think you can make any sense of the whole thing. I have spent an inordinant amount of time talking to many insurance companies only to get outright no's or liability quotes from $3000 to $5000. I have a broker in Peterborough (the home of the canoe) working on it now. At least he knows what a canoe is!!
Pam