Originally Posted by
RobbieTunes
It was a business, you've called it a bike shop and had a business license. It should not be on a homeowner's policy if that's the case, as no homeowner's policy is intended to cover a business.
It WAS a business, back when I lived in Montpelier (2010-2014). You may remember the pictures of the 32 foot garage/shop that got quite a few nice comments, some bordering on jealousy, when I posted them five years ago. I moved to my current location in 2015, and while I kept the license on file with the county (it cost me about $25.00 a year in taxes, most of that as penalties for not doing the annual property filing), and my VA sales tax license was for Syke the Shirtmaker (my reenactment clothing), plus I never did a commercial job at the current site.
I had intended to get Syke's Cyclery going again this year, now that I'm retired from my real job, but it never took off. In the past four years, I did two repair jobs for one of my old customers who absolutely refused to believe I'd shut the shop down. And most of my pay was the '92 Diamonback Expert that is my only brifter equipped bike. Between my plans to get it going again not taking off, and now the complete loss of my facility, tools and inventory - plus I never hung out a shingle at the current site - I can't see keeping any of the legalisms going now.
The insurance adjustor had asked me about it, got the same answer, and was quite happy with it. And any questions he had about all the inventory hanging around were answered when I gave him a tour of my bicycle barn. He never realized that one person could own that many bicycles. And all of them were over 25 year old antiques.
I've been spending this evening working on detailing the losses (got the tools and hardware done, start on the bicycle parts tomorrow), or I would have caught this earlier and not let it go to this point. Robbie Tunes is right about the coverage thing, but I never overstepped the bounds on this property. Unless not bothering to cancel the tax account with the county is doing so.
Quite frankly, the late garage never physically worked about well enough to be efficient. Plus, the wife's car went in every night, so I'd have to pack up anything I was doing, and then set it all up the following morning.
Oh yeah, that Armstrong was not a contracted job for the WWII group. It was my bike, was going to be loaned to the group for Military Thru the Ages, and hopefully one of the women was going to decide she just had to have it.
I believe that covers everything? Sorry for getting things riled up.