Having bought my first DSLR camera for nearly £650 like a week ago and preparing to go on holiday now, I was very anxious that anything bad would happen to my precious camera and decided to look into some sort of insurance cover to give me peace of mind. Although you will take reasonable care of your digital camera during your holiday period, sometimes there are things which are just out of your control and you may find yourself in a situation where your valuable camera is lost, stolen or damaged.

Usually people hope for the best when they go abroad expecting the locals to be nice and very welcoming but as in every country, you sometimes get the bad guys and your digital camera may be snatched from you and leave you several hundred pounds out of pocket. Therefore it is important that you have proper insurance in place for things like that.

If you haven’t purchased extended warranty for your DSLR camera (standard manufacturer’s warranty only covers for faults), you may be taking a huge risk. You might drop the camera in water while trying to take a good shot and having accidental damage cover is therefore crucial. This is why you need to keep on renewing your camera’s warranty if you think the camera is still worth a lot of money.

As I was buying annual travel insurance for my holiday trip, I wanted to know whether my DSLR camera was covered under the policy. So I called up Virgin Money Travel Insurance and talked to an advisor who told me that if I go with their Silver package, I would be able to claim upto £1500 on baggage. Now since my digital camera would be considered as personal belonging carried in the suitcase, I should be able to claim it.

My other option was to have the camera as an endorsement. This means that it would be covered under a separate insurance policy just for that trip that I was going to make. The cost to insure my £650 DSLR camera would be around £30 for a single trip! Although it would cover it even if it is lost, stolen or damaged, this was too expensive considering that I could get annual cover for my camera for that price and settling for a holiday trip period would be silly.

So I was thinking of going with the standard travel insurance policy when I decided to read the policy wording. It states that you can only claim upto £200 for a single item (some companies allow upto £400). What this really means if that since my camera is worth £650, they would assess the usual wear and tear and come up with a current price tag and the maximum they would pay me is £200 even if the current price for the camera comes at £600. This is just insane and this is what the advisors don’t tell you. You can claim a total of £1500 for baggage but for any single item, you can only claim upto £200. This is not what I wanted and does not cover anything really because I wouldn’t be able to replace my DSLR camera if anything happened to it.

So if you’re thinking of insuring your DSLR camera under travel insurance, think again! You are better off purchasing extended warranty for your precious belonging if you’re really worried about it.