A bit of help needed. We have bought a new car, which the garage wants us to take delivery of, however due to a problem with our licences it will be a couple of weeks to get the insurance. Is it legal to store the car uninsured, on the drive at the side of my house, whilst we wait The garage are threatening storage charges if we do not take delivery asap It will not be on a public road.
you need to do an insurance, here on SFN are a few working with this. By the way: you'll pay insurance till you can provide a "compromis de vente", the insurer will not let you out of the contract, that's to make sure in case of an accident the vehicle is covered. I did not know this as I sold a car in France to a buyer who then never changed the name at the prefecture. I could not get hold of the buyer for 6 month till he got stopped at a traffic control. During this time I have had to pay the insurance. So you better call up and insure the car.
Haydn - I like!
I totally agree with Carl Alban.....YOU are giving them business, if they won't play ball take your business elsewhere. If you have parted with money and signed dated contract -release dates tell them what you think about their customer service, tell them you will never use them for servicing etc. (that's where the money is made), and tell them how influential you are in the locality and will publish all of this NON service to make other aware !!!!
Just to back up what others have said on here, we were told by our insurance company that even though our car was off the road it was still necessary to insure it for the reasons already stated. Imagine if someone stole it and it wasn't insured!!
Our insurance agent collected his daughter from us half an hour ago, so I asked him. He is reliable, in fact an encyclopaedia of insurance facts and figures (yawn, yawn normally). I just saw this as he arrived and asked him. He says that the moment you take a car into possession you should have insurance. I know you are having it delivered, but if you were collecting it would need to be insured to drive away. Car insurance is, I now know thanks to your question, all inclusive so that if it was stolen you would not be covered, if it then had an accident or caused damage, injury or whatever then also not. It would seem that if the car is not insured then any injury to any driver, meaning a car thief here, could see you paying at least part of medical costs!
It all seems draconian to me but no doubt people don't bother until something happens then they are out of all kinds of luck.
As far as i'm aware you have to take a wheel off and the battery out. If someone steals the car and kills somebody YOU are liable not the person in the car as there is no insurance. I asked previously at my axa as we had a car we weren't going to use and was trying to sell.
I was told by my broker that we couldn't leave a car in our garage uninsured until we sold it but I guess most French people would just ignore them. If you are willing to take the risk, I doubt any gendarme is going to give you any grief.
How on earth can a garage selling you a new car charge you storage? Tell them to **** off ;)