Insurance for piano? quick feedback on Heritage or others?

[justharmony]

Anyone have their piano insured with Heritage, in particular?  I have a unique situation - my piano is at our neighbor's house temporarily simply because of some major house issues.... we found out from our homeowner's insurance that that is a major problem in terms of coverage.
Anyone have any feedback, suggestions, or recommendations about Heritage or any other insurance folks that cover intstruments that is NOT homeowner's insurance?

Speedy feedback would be greatly appreciated!!!!

Thank you!!!
JH

[compline]

There's a couple of things you could do here.  
One is to contact the insurance companies for a quote and based on the fact that the piano  is not in your day to day care and control and it is an individual item you want to insure.  The insurance companies will want to know how secure the piano is and who is looking after it and also how often you can go and inspect it, do you for instance have your own key to the property.
The premium, if they are willing to take it on is likely to make it expensive.
The other option is to take advantage of the insurance of the person who owns or lives in the house, assuming they have any.  What happens here is that you could agree with that persons insurer to have you named as beneficiary in respect of a certain of amount of money that covers the cost of replacement cost of the piano.  Or, get yourself jointly named on the policy so that if anything happens , your consent is needed.  You might be able to compel that other person to claim under the policy, or you might be able to claim on your own behalf, but you would need to check with a solicitor on that and also the terms of the insurance.  
You might be able to get insurance based on the fact that it is in a kind of storage and again you could check on that with the insurers.   There might be something like storage insurance.

Trust that helps.

[iansinclair]

I might add a comment here.  Even when the piano is under your control -- in your house -- it should be valued and listed separately on your homeowner's policy (at least this is true in the USA).  The generic personal property coverage on most homeowner's policies probably will not cover an item such as a piano with a fairly high individual value (this also applies to jewelry -- the real kind -- and art work and other items with high individual value), or will cover it at only a ridiculous fraction of what it's really worth.

Such individual listings usually won't cause much change in premium -- if any -- unless they add up to a substantial fraction of the generic personal property coverage.

[justharmony]

Thanks for the replies and input.  We opted - for now - to go ahead and insure it with Heritage and it's not super cheap but it's important to protect the instrument I think.  We found out our homeowner's insurance (didn't inquire about theirs... long story there) would cover it at 10 % of the replacement cost.  Yikes.  So.  For now... we'll foot the bill of protecting the instrument over there and see what happens when if finally comes home. 

I go and practice every day and do have a key to their home.   Pretty awesome of them to allow this, I must say.

Thanks, guys.

JH