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car insurance...deary deary me


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I need to check whether we are paying what be considered normal for our car insurance...

VW passat 2.0l tdi, 6 years old, parked on street in a city (Lyon). no NCD as we had not owned a car for several years prior to buying this one.

we are currently paying around 400E per month for fully comp insurance. this seems incredibly high to me - and i am told that this is with a 50% discount as my husband is a teacher....

is this just what insurance costs in france when starting from scratch? or are we missing something?

merci for any tips to reduce
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Is it really worth paying fully comp at that price? You could replace the car every 18 months or so for that. If after a year you have had no trouble, I'd seriously consider dropping to minimum cover unless you truly cherish your car. On the other hand, demonstrators do seem to enjoy setting fire to conveniently sited cars which must push the premiums up a bit for cars parked on the street in cities - but then again is this even covered or are riots excluded from the policy?

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Mr CF did try some of the online comparison sites, but none of them would allow him to complete the forms because we didn't have any insurance history in France. So then he tried several companies IRL on the phone and was gobsmacked at the premiums quoted. According to the insurer the high cost is due to our lack of insurance history in France (as an unknown quantity we are apparently a big risk), and the fact that the car is not garaged overnight in a big city.

He is a teacher, but employed by an Association rather than the govt, so doesn't actually qualify for most of the benefits that French teachers are eligible for. But I will check with him for the MAIF.

Once we've had insurance for a year we'll be able to try the online comparison sites and hopefully find something cheaper. If not I think we'll drop to 3rd party, it's just not feasible.

Cheers all

R
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That is the way we found it too. And for all I had driven our main car for abour 10 years without an accident, then I still had no eligibilty to no claims in France when we got a second car. Would have been exactly the same if my husband had insured it himself, even though he had a good no claims on our main car.

You don't actually have to work for the Education Nationale to get into the MAIF, and they do insure people who work for other associations, call them and ask them.
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Have you tried MMA? When I first bought a car in France I was living between France and UK and I was still running a car in the UK as well. (And please don't anyone tell me that you can't own cars in two countries ...) MMA were aware of this but it didn't seem to matter. They asked for 10 years driving history and I had to dig out my old policy schedules, not the insurance certificates, and get my current and previous insurers in the UK to fax MMA confirming the dates I had been insured with them and that I had never made a claim. If I understood the chap at MMA correctly, the bonus/malus system here is not like in the UK when you have to 'earn' an NCB for each vehicle you insure and you can only use it on one vehicle at a time. All he seemed interested in was my insurance record, and once we had scrabbled together what he considered to be enough pieces of evidence, voila he allowed me maximum discount.
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