insurance for France

[paul1961]

Can anyone help me with a broker or insurance company that I can insure my bike in france. I see ebike does a 365 day policy but when you look at the small print it says travelling. I have just brought a place in the charente and would like to go over for at least a year.. I will try and register the bike after a while but not straight away.
Regards Paul

 

[wessie]

I'd just get the Ebike policy using a UK accommodation address at my sister's as she lives in a cheap postcode. Keep a UK registered mobile phone on the go for them to ring if they need to contact you. £10 a month SIM only job makes it easy.

Your biggest worry will be getting nagged by local plod if you upset them. Make sure you know the regulations about how long you are allowed to keep the bike on UK plates & not exchange your driver's licence. Even better, find out where they drink and buy plenty of pineau.

 

[stolzy]

Loads of Brits keep UK-registered vehicles in France. Insurance is the only real problem. You can have the vehicle registered at a UK address and the insurer will take your money and give you a certificate. Whether you are insured when push comes to shove is entirely another matter - you did lie to them after all..

 

[paul1961]

Thanks guys I have emailed ebike a couple of days ago but have not had a response from them. Anyone else got any ideas please.
Paul.

 

[Piaf]

Bring your bike to France.......go to a local insurance agent. explain you intend to register the bike as soon as the paperwork is sorted.

I've done this with cars and bikes through AGF (Alliance ,,,now) they were very understanding one vehicle took 12 months to complete but as long as you start the procedure they're happy.(well in my case they were.)

Good luck.

 

[Wapping]

I'd just get the Ebike policy using a UK accommodation address at my sister's as she lives in a cheap postcode. Keep a UK registered mobile phone on the go for them to ring if they need to contact you. £10 a month SIM only job makes it easy.

Your biggest worry will be getting nagged by local plod if you upset them. Make sure you know the regulations about how long you are allowed to keep the bike on UK plates & not exchange your driver's licence. Even better, find out where they drink and buy plenty of pineau.

A bigger worry (which may become a problem) may be using what is a fake UK address when purchasing a policy of insurance. Particularly one that is chosen on purpose as it has a lower post code crime loading or to hide the fact that one was resident for extended periods outside of our barmy balmy shores. What is to stop anyone and everyone doing just that, every day? I could use my sister's low rate rural Warwickshire address instead of my own high rate inner London address, all without the bother of cheap UK SIM. A cunning plan, Baldrick

Of course the chances of being caught are very slim. But when chummy comes to fill in the claim form he will be forced to lie again, so compounding the problem. Plough into the local French mayor's mother's car (wiping out her and her grandchild).... then prepare yourself for some very technical French, probably not covered by the average phrasebook.... and some interesting questions from the insurer, domiciled in Gibraltar. Good luck

==========

France's rules are similar to our own. If you stay more than XX months, accumulative, then you need to re-register the vehicle. Inconvenient, but it works just the same for bods coming here. Matey wants to live in France, so he may as well avoid being thought of by the French as a pikey 'illegal'.

It is reasonably easy to insure a foreign EU registered vehicle in France. My aged mother managed, simply by walking in to a local provincial insurance broker and talking to the bod in very bad French. I think it was with Axa or maybe Allianz / AGF, I forget which. She also managed to get a temporary (but extended) bit of cover from her UK insurer, to tied her over until she sorted it all out. Similarly, she found it quite easy to re-register her car. She has a French car now, as she lives in France permanently. She also has a French licence and an English one, along with the usual 'carte gris' for the vehicle. All quite easy.

 

[stolzy]

She also has a French licence and an English one,

How did she manage that?

I ask purely in a spirit of academic enquiry and not at all because having two licences from different countries would be very useful from the points perspective.

It is reasonably easy to insure a foreign EU registered vehicle in France

It can be and should be, but sometimes it can be next to impossible. The Euro CoC is the key and with that its usually straightforward. Problem is that local prefectures have their own interpretations of the regulations.

Without a CoC it can be very difficult - I have a SIII airportable Landrover which I would dearly love to bring over to France, but there is no possibility of getting it registered here.

 

[Wapping]

How did she manage that?

I ask purely in a spirit of academic enquiry and not at all because having two licences from different countries would be very useful from the points perspective.

Gawd only knows.

She has lived in Provence for over 20 years.

Most of her day-to-day help came via an architect who did a lot of work on my parents' house following a very large forest fire that swept across it. I think things were much more relaxed twenty or more years ago.... before joined up computers, 'the war on terror' and all that old baloney.

Getting the certificate to import her UK VW Golf 20 years ago was similarly easy, at least in rural Provence. I guess, as your post points out, it's the luck of a very big draw.

In passing, in those days there were still the equivalent of 'tax disks', handed out from a bod in the local cafe who had a licence to distribute them.

 

[bowser]

You should not have more than one EU issued driving licence at any one time, if you end up with two you should consider that if either country finds out then you will have one or both cancel your licence.
We get it all the time at work and often get requested to seize a licence and send it back to swansea.
In addition as a resident of an EU county you cannot drive a foreign registered vehicle, so if you live in the uk then you cannot drive any non uk reg vehicle in the uk.
I have no idea how it works in France but in the UK you have only 6 months to start registration of a vehicle up to a maximum of 12 months after which if you havent done it then its illegal to drive on the road.
Re the insurance we would not accept as valid any insurance without a green card on any non uk vehicle unless the original is translated into English and that has been my experience in the rest of the EU as well.

 

[wessie]

You should not have more than one EU issued driving licence at any one time, if you end up with two you should consider that if either country finds out then you will have one or both cancel your licence.
We get it all the time at work and often get requested to seize a licence and send it back to swansea.
In addition as a resident of an EU county you cannot drive a foreign registered vehicle, so if you live in the uk then you cannot drive any non uk reg vehicle in the uk.
I have no idea how it works in France but in the UK you have only 6 months to start registration of a vehicle up to a maximum of 12 months after which if you havent done it then its illegal to drive on the road.
Re the insurance we would not accept as valid any insurance without a green card on any non uk vehicle unless the original is translated into English and that has been my experience in the rest of the EU as well.

Your post is not very coherent and the bit I've highlighted in red I do not believe. If this was true then a UK domiciled driver with a UK PSV licence could not drive an Irish registered coach in the UK. The practice is quite common as there are tax advantages.

Similarly, some truck operators use British drivers in vehicles registered in other EU countries for similar tax advantages.

What about a British soldier with a UK driving licence, based in Paderborn who hires a German car to drive back to the UK for his 2 week holiday? Are you saying he breaks the law when he rolls off the ferry at Dover? I think not.

 

[stolzy]

Your post is not very coherent and the bit I've highlighted in red I do not believe. If this was true then a UK domiciled driver with a UK PSV licence could not drive an Irish registered coach in the UK. The practice is quite common as there are tax advantages.

Similarly, some truck operators use British drivers in vehicles registered in other EU countries for similar tax advantages.

What about a British soldier with a UK driving licence, based in Paderborn who hires a German car to drive back to the UK for his 2 week holiday? Are you saying he breaks the law when he rolls off the ferry at Dover? I think not.

Exactly what I was thinking.

. . . and I had guessed that having two licences would not be entirely within the letter of the law.

Very useful though

 

[wessie]

Exactly what I was thinking.

. . . and I had guessed that having two licences would not be entirely within the letter of the law.

Very useful though

You aren't supposed to have 2 licences but there is a workaround.

If you are a law abiding citizen then once you have been resident in another country for the x months stipulated in local law you would, naturally, exchange your "foreign" licence for a local one. As part of the process, the issuing authority of the "foreign" licence will be informed of the exchange and cancel the "foreign" licence.

However, as an example, if one should appear to lose one's UK licence before one got around to exchange it for a French licence then one would need to apply for a duplicate UK licence, paying the appropriate fee. One could then exchange the duplicate for a new French licence and the French would send your UK licence back to Swansea to be cancelled. One would have something of a dilemma if one then subsequently found the previously lost UK licence. There would be no point in returning it to Swansea as they will have closed your file. You should really destroy it as it serves no useful purpose, unless one is of a deviant nature and fraudulently flashed it at a gendarme in an attempt to get away with just a fine rather than having points deducted from your French licence. I'm sure nobody has ever done this as it is very naughty.

 

[bowser]

Your post is not very coherent and the bit I've highlighted in red I do not believe. If this was true then a UK domiciled driver with a UK PSV licence could not drive an Irish registered coach in the UK. The practice is quite common as there are tax advantages.

Similarly, some truck operators use British drivers in vehicles registered in other EU countries for similar tax advantages.

What about a British soldier with a UK driving licence, based in Paderborn who hires a German car to drive back to the UK for his 2 week holiday? Are you saying he breaks the law when he rolls off the ferry at Dover? I think not.

I dont wish to be rude but do you read what you write?
A british sqaddie based in Paderborn is resident in Germany so can drive all the non uk reg vehicles he likes in the uk.

Thankfully you believing me matters not a jot:-
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motorin...cle/ImportingAndExportingAVehicle/DG_10014623

UK residents are not allowed to use non-UK registered vehicles on UK roads. The only exception is if you work in another EU member state and use an EU-registered company car temporarily in the UK for business purposes.

Oh and some (read a lot) of truck companies take the piss with all sorts of regulations, the old bill are now aware of this, and more and more are being seized, see article in national press today Telegraph I think.

Its been specifically brought in to prevent people registering a car in say Romania or Bulgaria taxing and insuring there and driving here on a green card which was becoming a bit of a problem, so this closed the gap.

 

[bowser]

You aren't supposed to have 2 licences but there is a workaround.

If you are a law abiding citizen then once you have been resident in another country for the x months stipulated in local law you would, naturally, exchange your "foreign" licence for a local one. As part of the process, the issuing authority of the "foreign" licence will be informed of the exchange and cancel the "foreign" licence.

However, as an example, if one should appear to lose one's UK licence before one got around to exchange it for a French licence then one would need to apply for a duplicate UK licence, paying the appropriate fee. One could then exchange the duplicate for a new French licence and the French would send your UK licence back to Swansea to be cancelled. One would have something of a dilemma if one then subsequently found the previously lost UK licence. There would be no point in returning it to Swansea as they will have closed your file. You should really destroy it as it serves no useful purpose, unless one is of a deviant nature and fraudulently flashed it at a gendarme in an attempt to get away with just a fine rather than having points deducted from your French licence. I'm sure nobody has ever done this as it is very naughty.

No but I have had someone produce it to me in the attempt to show he had a valid licence to drive, got right upset when after checks he got arrested for fraud !!! whats more he even got convicted.

 

[paul1961]

well guys I have taken the advice of Piaf and come over to france and gone to Axa insurance and got a quote. 230euros for fully comp mine in the uk was £130 but add £74 tax plus mot and its not bad at all. The agent told me they are having a crack down on brits out here on uk plates and she has got to write to all brits to say they must start the transfer to french plates imediately. So thanks Piaf good advice and the best way to do it is leagally with no come backs.