Car Insurance in France...

[dilbertina]

Everything starting to come together - school for dd1 sorted and have found a house to rent in Bougival, we plan to move early August. So on to the loose ends...!

Car Insurance...any recommendations? Everything we've looked at seems hideously expensive....

Many thanks!

We took Direct Assurance (a web-based one) and I would NOT recommend them! We also took another web-based one for the house and it was even worse. Subsequently changed to Axa for the house and found them very pleasant and competent (though never had to make a claim).

We've just moved to Luxembourg and the car insurance is about twice as much as it was in France, so count yourself lucky!!

Good luck with the move.

We used AGF, after struggling with web searches we just went into a branch, you can check nearest on their website. It's not the cheapest but we found it easier doing it in person. They were very helpful and accepted our UK no claims bonus even though we hadn't had a car for 3 years.

try Generali, we asked 8 companies and they came out the best

Car insurance in France is comparatively expensive. I think it's down to the fact that it's the car itself which is insured for virtually anyone to drive but that's just a theory!

Many thanks everyone. Few more to try... or avoid!

You don't have to have an any driver policy any more. You can ask for 'conduite excusive' for you and your partner/spouse to reduce the premium.

Whatever company you choose, the advantage of using an agency, rather than going direct via the internet, is that you will be dealing with the same people all the time and they will soon know you so you won't have to repeat yourself continually over the phone. (particularly useful if you aren't comfortable making phone calls in French)

sorry, that should be 'conduite exclusive'

Just to add - the other reason I would definitely use an agency rather than the internet is that there is a definite individual to contact and speak to in case of problems, ideally not far from where you live so you can show up there if you have to.

With the web-based ones we found you had to ring up (paying high per-minute charges for every call) and then each time you got a different person. It was a nightmare trying to sort out any problems and cost us loads in telephone bills.