Insurance / Valuation
No one really wants to talk about insurance because we all know it’s a racket. And most of us don’t read the fine print until we’re ticked off that our favorite bureau has a giant gash in it. It didn’t matter until that moment.
At Movher, we try to make understanding valuation and insurance easy.
First of all, they are not the same thing. (Lesson One, check.)
Valuation is the value of your goods and it’s something you MUST state. To make it easy: if all of your goods were loaded on our truck, what would you say they’re worth? In Washington, your goods have to be worth at least 60 cents per pound (This is called Basic Valuation, it comes free with every move, and costs you nothing). You cannot tell us your goods are worth nothing. Not an option. So if we have 6,000 pounds of your goods on our truck and you went with Basic Valuation at 60 cents per pound of Valuation, our truck caught on fire and all of your goods were destroyed, we would owe you $3,600.
For a move within Washington, you have two other options in addition to the Basic Valuation option. One with a $300 deductible and the other with no deductible. These options provide greater coverage if any of your goods are damaged, but do cost you more money regardless of whether or not there is any damage. (Think peace of mind.) Again, we ask what you value your goods to be worth that we’ll be moving. With both of these options, they must be worth at least $5.00 per pound. So if you’re moving 6,000 pounds of goods, they must be worth at least $5.00 per pound, or $30,000. Maybe you bought all of your goods from Sotheby’s and you know they’re worth more. You can go as high as you want, you just can’t go lower than the $5.00 per pound mandated by the state ($30,000 in this example).
For a move outside of Washington, there is no $300 deductible option. The only two options for interstate moves are either the Basic Valuation of 60 cents per pound or the no deductible option and the per pound value is based on $7.00 per pound, not the $5.00 mandated by Washington. I know, I don’t get it either, but I am not making this up; I try to follow the rules and explain them to our customers (this can be blamed on my education background).
Insurance, on the other hand, is a completely different beast.
You can opt for insurance through our third-party provider, and sometimes this is an ideal solution for your move, whether we are loading a PODS or rental truck for you, if you want to insure just a few items rather than the entire shipment, and so on. Check out the link above to learn more and see if it would be a good fit.