Immatricution warning!

[clareS]

After months of gathering bits of paper to get the car registered here, and a week of hell last week changing the headlights, doing the controle technique and getting to the prefecture to finally do the registration (total cost 900 euros), I was very shocked to come away with a carte grise within 10 minutes, leaving me with an invalid british car insurance based on our UK registration documents (taken away from me before I had time to rip off the bit you're supposed to send in when you export the vehicle). I drove home very nervously and sorted out the insurance (at 4.30 on Friday afternoon), only to crash the car next morning. At least I didn't crash it on friday with very dodgy insurance.

I'm not sure what you are supposed to do in this situation - reorganise your insurance from a mobile outside the prefecture??

We're waiting to hear if the car can be repaired or not ...

[Will]

You did a couple of things the wrong way round, though, fortunately for you, it sounds as if you got there in the end and it worked out OK.

This is how it is supposed to happen:
When you move to France (or according to DVLA, just before) you should notify DVLA that you are exporting the vehicle. That will also bring about the nice little bonus of a refund of road tax. When you are in France, you should cancel your UK insurance and take out French insurance. Many French companies will insure a UK registered vehicle for a limited period to allow you to re-register it. Then, when the registration process is complete, you just have to notify the insurer of the new index number (and get the controle technique documentation changed, if applicable, to the new index number).

[Teamedup]

ClairS why would your UK insurance have no longer been valid? It would still have had the same license plate until you changed it, still been the same car.

An alternative would have been for you to have taken out french insurance on your car prior to your trip to the prefecture and then just told your new insurer when you got your new carte grise and you would have been covered too. Cancelling your brit insurance as soon as the french one was sorted out, which they usually do immediately.  Insurers do do this.

 

Also as a general tip always keep photocopies of any docs you are taking to any officialdom in France, just in case the whisk away the original.

 

ps sorry about the accident and hope that you are OK.

[Mutts]

Sorry to hear about your crash ClairS.

Can I clarify my situation please as it sounds like I'm about to do things the wrong way around too: We have an old UK car in France (insured with French co). It passed the CT last month, and when we next visit we're planning on getting the carte grise. We have the UK reg. doc. and thought we didn't send off the tear-off slip to notify its export (and refund on road fund tax) until we have the carte grise and it's properly registered in France.

Can anyone confirm????

Linda

[derf]

I would think that most people did it the way you are doing, including myself, not strictly official of course.

You should notify Swansea of your intended export and get a certificate of export before you leave the UK to give to the French Prefecture, but in the past most Prefectures would only deal with the original Uk log book (registration document) and made it very difficult if you presented an export document.

Don't worry about it, as soon as you get your carte grise send a copy of it and a copy of your original UK registration document to Swansea to tell them your vehicle has been permanently exported.

[Mutts]

Thanks Les -

"Don't worry about it, as soon as you get your carte grise send a copy of it and a copy of your original UK registration document to Swansea to tell them your vehicle has been permanently exported."

That's a great relief - have enough to worry about here as we've mislaid the e-ticket for our ferry crossing on Thursday   MOH is frantically searching

Linda

[Deby]

You will also need a certificate of conformity - ha!  In theory you dont actually need one if you have the new V5 which is a european registration document, however if you come across a functionnaire in the prefecture he may well insist upon one.  We actually printed off the list of necessary documentaion from the French Website stating we needed the new V5 OR Dec of Conformity. Mr Functionnaire still insisted on Cert of Conf though, we rang VW who said, you don't need a Cert of Conf because you have the new V5. Anyway, we paid 120Euros for the Cert of Conf to keep Mr Functionnaire happy as he was the only person that would issue the Carte Grise.  C'est la vie francaise!

A friend had to get his Belgian Cert of Conf. changed to a French one just to please the same fu-fu-funtionnaire.  I add the Belgian one was in French too, but did not have the word Francais on it

By the way 900 Euros sound a bit steep!

Deby

[clareS]

I think my UK insurance was invalid as the car was no longer registered in the Uk, (or maybe it was as I hadn't sent in the export slip!) I'll send all the documents in to the DVLA and hope that is ok.

The reason we didn't do all those things before leaving the UK was that we weren't sure whether we would be staying or not, we wanted to see how everything went before burning our bridges in case we were back again in 3 months. It cost us a fortune because we had to change the headlights (500 Euros), immatriculation 281 E, controle technique another 70 E.

We also had to get a certificate of conformity (quite straightforward, from UK Skoda, cost about £50), and a certificate from the tax office in Dijon to say we didn't need to pay VAT, we still had the sale document from when we bought the car.

I think as someone has said, we should have changed to French insurance first under our UK registration, then we could have just called to give the new registration details. I didn't think of that.

Let's just hope the car isn't completely written off now! Although at least then we'd have to get a car with the steering wheel on the right side - there's always a silver lining somewhere!

[clareS]

P.S

Re the export slip on the registration document, I would have just taken this off so I could send it in after the vehicle was registered if I'd realised it was going to be taken away. The trouble is you never quite know if you're going to get there and find there's some crucial piece of paper missing, (and it might take 6 weeks to get hold of that piece of paper), so I wouldn't have thought it would be a good idea to send this in until you know you have the carte grise sorted.

In our case, we still have a house in the UK and the car was still registered under this address. I sometimes think though that this causes more problems than it solves, as sitting on the fence can just make things more complicated ...

[Bones]

--You will also need a certificate of conformity - ha!  In theory you don't actually need one if you have the new V5 which is a european registration document--

Eh? You need a cert of conformity to register the car in France, so you'd already have one for the export cert, right?

 I'm confused!

 Will pointed out (in another thread) that the conformity cert should be rendered unnecessary by the new V5 in relation to export cert (but usually isn't accepted by the french anyhow - surprise surprise...).

So, er, I've lost my point...

 

 

[mascamps.com]

Does this mean that if you have a UK registered car which was a grey import to the UK and now has a V5 but for which you can't get a certificate of conformity (because, being a "grey import" it isn't UK spec) that you can now go through the "normal" process of moving it onto French plates rather than having to "import" it from the UK?

 

Arnold

 

[RayB]

[quote]You did a couple of things the wrong way round, though, fortunately for you, it sounds as if you got there in the end and it worked out OK. This is how it is supposed to happen: When you move to Fran...[/quote]

**When you move to France (or according to DVLA, just before) you should notify DVLA that you are exporting the vehicle.**

When we registered our car a couple of years ago we didn't tell the DVLA anything. We merely traded the UK reg for the Carte Grise.

[Motorhead]

Hate to say this Ray but there may well be a summons with your name on it floating about somewhere. If you don't tell DVLA anything they will send a road tax reminder out as normal. When this isn't paid or a SORN declared you stand to get a fine and if that isn't paid they'll issue a summons for non payment if there not too busy (which is most of the time).

Arnold, the new V5c will not do anything for grey imports. You will still have to go for single vehicle type approval.

[Chas]

[quote]**When you move to France (or according to DVLA, just before) you should notify DVLA that you are exporting the vehicle.**When we registered our car a couple of years ago we didn't tell the DVLA anyth...[/quote]

Having heard that the French authorities preferred the vehicle log book rather than the export certificate we too took this route some 5 years ago. No problems and the log book was returned to DVLA by the sous prefecture in Saintes.  

[Motorhead]

Whatever happened 5 years ago will certainly no longer be relavent after the end of this month when V5 documents are officially withdrawn. Export certificates will be no more but the export tear off on the new V5c(ertificates) must be returned.

There is absolutely no guarantee that the French authorities will actually return the old paperwork back to DVLA and addressing this problem is one of the reasons that the new system has been set up the way it has.

[RayB]

[quote]Hate to say this Ray but there may well be a summons with your name on it floating about somewhere. If you don't tell DVLA anything they will send a road tax reminder out as normal. When this isn't pa...[/quote]

**Hate to say this Ray but there may well be a summons with your name on it floating about somewhere**

Perhaps, but since I will NEVER be in the UK again . . . .? The Prefecture didn't seem to have any problems with the paperwork.

[Will]

DVLA has always advised getting an export certificate when going overseas, though in practice most French prefectures have been quite happy to accept British registration documents which do eventually find their way back to DVLA. The requirements for taxing UK registered vehicles have changed fairly recently, so unless you have notified export there is a risk of you being asked for unpaid road tax. Now that the old registration document is being replaced you do not need a separate export certificate but you do need to use the tear-off part to notify DVLA.

As far as I know the European standard registration document will not supersede the need for either a certificate of conformity or a DRIRE attestation, whichever is applicable. But it's early days so we will have to see how it works out. The only certainty is that different prefectures, and different officials, will all vary in their interpretation of what is needed.

[mascamps.com]

I was working on importing the "grey import" mentioned above and received the little note from the licensing people to the effect that they were fining me £80 (I think), that I still had to pay the road tax, etc. What I did was to write them a letter informing them that we've been in France for some time and this appears to have headed off any court action.

In practice we're outside their jurisdiction here so there's not really anything that they can do in terms of enforcing UK law over here. Same thing happened when I got my jury summons.

 

Arnold

 

[Motorhead]

'Fraid I'll have to disagree with Will on one point. I know from experience that V5's (and driving licences) don't always find their way back to DVLA and the excuse I was given "sometimes things get lost whilst we're waiting on enough to justify a mailing" makes me think it's not an isolated case. What's more the format of the new V5c would seem to suggest that DVLA have had problems with documents not being returned from abroad in the past.

[Jacks]

Do the Prefecture always keep the English Log Book when issuing a Carte Grise? We have a private number plate on our car and will need the Log Book to transfer the number plate.

Regards Jacks

[Motorhead]

First of all, there's no such thing as an English log book/V5 - they come from Wales and say UK on them.

The French authorities always retain the V5 whether they send them back or file them under b1n. To retain your number for private disposal the legal way to do it is to put the number "on retention" which you can do for a small fee. DVLA will then issue an age related normal number (with new V5c) for the car which you can then use to get a carte grise.

[mascamps.com]

Apart from the V5's that come from Northern Ireland which also say UK on them.

Arnold

 

[Motorhead]

Correct Arnold, Swansea don't cover Ulster.

[mascamps.com]

It probably seems like a slightly petty point, but the difference has caused us more than the occasional hassle in getting ourselves sorted out here. Off to the Republic of Ireland went our tax documents for a start as they listed us as being from Ireland. Totally off topic for here, but I'm still wondering whether or not letting that go would have been to our advantage.

 

Arnold

 

[Motorhead]

Try saying Ulster in your best Ian Paisley accent. They might get the message then.