I know you have to have insurance for craft fairs etc, but do you need/have insurance for selling on line? If so, what type/where from etc.
thankyou!
debbie xx

An interesting question. What follows is just my opinion. I have no specialist knowledge about this.

The only online insurance I can think of, is for the monetary transactions themselves which should be covered by Paypal or the credit card companies if someone uses a card fraudulently and you have a Premier/business account with Papall or another company such as World Pay.

Selling from your home and at fairs brings up other thoughts:
I don't think beads/jewellery within your house would be covered by house insurance as you are selling them commercially.
If you are giving classes from your home I think you should have public liability insurance in case they fall, burn or otherwise hurt themselves.
If you take your beads to shows, you should officially let your car insurance company know your vehicle is being used for commercial purposes.
Public liability insurance may be required at a shows but usually show organisers simply state that you should have insurance which means they are not liable to cover someone tripping over your flexes and breaking a leg.

As with any insurance, what do you think the risks are? Is the risk so great that it justifies getting insured or are you willing to take the risk yourself?

I sell my jewellery online and have liability insurance from Paul Wallace. I made an initial enquiry online then they telephoned me to go through the details and they were very helpful and reasonably priced too.

I think you probably mean Ian Wallace?

The type of insurance you need when selling online is Product Liability,

You can usually get this hand in hand with public liability, which is worth having in case you ever do fairs, private parties and so on.

What are those?

Product Liability is if your product hurts someone and they sue you. So you sell a necklace online to Mrs Smith. Mrs Smith's son chews on it, the pendant comes lose and he ends up in hospital.

As there was no cautionary advice on the jewellery to keep it away from children, Mrs Smith sues you and wins. Because in today's whacked out society it is deemed your fault that she a) has no common sense and knows to keep the necklace away from children without actually NEEDING a caution label on the packaging and b) cant control her little urchin.

Without insurance, you could end up liable for a very costly court case. It is rare of course, but it happens. Think about recently how that flower seller at one of the main London stations was sued because someone slipped on a flower petal that had come lose from her display.

The tv is full of adverts for companies encouraging people to sue for anything they can.

Public liability is more for when you are doing business and anything else you do causes injury. Such as your craft fair table collapses on someone's toe or whatever.

If you employ staff you are obliged by law to have PL insurance at the very least.

The policies are very cheap on the whole and well worth having just in case. All insurance expenditure sucks because it feels like money down the drain. But the alternatives are worse!

Emma

My insurance is with Ian Wallace and I'm happy with them. Their insurance covers Public and Product Liability so you're okay at fairs and selling online. Just be aware that alsthough some insurers offer cheaper ins but only cover when you're trading from the stall (ie some of the market traders ins) and therefore won't cover online sales. I was also able to pay my ins this year by direct debit (for a small amount more) but this means it spreads the cost over the year rather than forking out a hefty lump sum.