Thinking about business protection & liability… curious what others are doing?
Summary: In a recent post, Danielle Craun shared their reflections after attending a meeting at the Chicago eBay Seller Circle, particularly about the importance of business insurance for eBay store owners. This sparked a discussion about the necessity of liability and other insurance coverages for in-home businesses or events involving guests. Carolina C shared their minimal insurance involvement for storage units, while Alyssa Shirk provided an extensive insight into their research on homeowners and general liability insurance options, along with coverage strategies for inventory. The conversation concluded with a focus on future planning and assessment based on business growth and personal circumstances.
Hi everyone 💛
I wanted to share something that came up recently that really got me thinking…
I was tuning into Chicago eBay Seller Circle’s meeting (huge thank you to Louis for always being so welcoming to our RVA group!), and they had a guest speaker, Dayton Leclercq, talking about business insurance.
I’ll be honest… it made me pause a bit.
Between:
running an eBay business
hosting monthly in-person meetings in my home
providing food/snacks
having people coming and going
…it got me thinking about things I haven’t really focused on yet, like liability, protection, and just generally making sure everything is covered “just in case.”
Not in a scary way, just in a “maybe I should be a little more prepared” way.
So I’m curious…
💭 Have any of you looked into:
business insurance for your eBay store?
liability coverage (especially if you host or sell locally)?
anything specific you’ve found helpful or worth having in place?
I know this isn’t the most exciting topic 😅
…but it feels like one of those important ones we don’t always talk about.
Would love to hear your thoughts or experiences 💛
Danielle
RVA Seller Circle
resaleyard
·3 months agoI have researched it last year. Even dug into my homeowners insurance to see what may be covered. In the event of any fire or other damages to my home, my homeowners insurance will not cover any losses connected to Resale Yard.
General Liability Insurance will eventually be the first step and will even cover me for things such as someone tripping at one of my yard sales and getting injured, something my homeowners insurance will likely deny coverage as itll be connected to my business. Looking around, itll cost about $300 per year for that for the lowest possible coverages (which isnt too much, but its something i guess).
Business personal property coverage was another one I looked into. Itll cover strictly inventory. This works for inventory in my home/garage but also anything inside of storage units I may have. This is useful for fires and thefts, even water and storm damages. I researched coverage for $5k in inventory and it was running about $150 per year or so, but its a add-on/rider via my homeowners insurance plan (there is only one company willing to cover my home since I am 0.1 miles outside of every other companies distance from fire department policies, so I didnt get to really shop around for other prices)
One thing I learned towards the end of the research, is that insurances want the cost value of the items, not the expected resale value. I.E. If i buy a storage unit for $500 but the items are expected to sell for $2000, insurance will only cover the $500. They also are hard balls about photo proof of the inventory, so that death pile in the corner waiting to be processed? My house burns down, I cant claim it... Only the items I took photos of. On reddit some people say the circumvent it by taking not super great photos of multiple items as the bring them into their room and toss them into the pile. Although insurances love detailed photos, just being able to completely identify the item in a photo of the whole pile does seem to be accepted most the time too.
I personally am not going to get insurance yet, I want to get back to being more consistent in listing again, get past all these crazy trips that were both planned and unplanned, and surgeries this year. Next year I will reevaluate. Basically I think I want to be above $2500 in sells in 90 days at minimum. As of right now I am riding fairly close to a loss. My donations to the horse rescue kind of help keep it at that line right now but I am also still buying a lot of storage items and equipment which are keeping my expenses up but shouldn't be a long term problem and I should see expenses dropping for the remainder of the year.
csowlets
·4 months agoI have storage units holding my inventory and have insurance on them just incase anything happens. That is all so far.