I am supposed to be collecting a car today and driving it home but as I was busy yesterday I overlooked to arrange insurance with AXA.
I have just been into my ‘espace client’ and requested insurance ‘au plus vite’ and the request had been acknowledged remotely but I am not sure if that means I have basic cover immediately or only when the agency opens tomorrow?
If the latter does anyone have any tips for temporary cover on a Sunday please.
Questionable tactic but if the car is not signed over to you until tomorrow, the current owner technically still owns it and provided it is still insured by the seller, you could drive it under their insurance remembering it is the car which is insured, not the driver per se.
Take your point Graham but we have to do the paperwork today. Seller is a garagiste who has multi vehicle cover but says I would not be covered as not an employee.
However he also said that any insurance request made by internet is valid from the time of the request irrespective of whether the bureau is open or not. I am trying to get some verification of this.
perhaps @fabien can help with such confirmation?
I take the point about the garagiste multi vehicle cover issue although still feel he could do more to help. Our garagiste loans us a car under his multi vehicle cover arrangement when ours is in for service so I would have thought it was doable.
Ah well.
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Hi Damian… Unfortunately your garagiste is not correct. This is true when you have a fleet but not for individual policies except if your doing your policy yourself online directly on a website such as lesfurets or something like that. Basically you need to have a contract signed off for the cover to be effective there is no backdating possible with car insurance since the new “DVLA equivalent” central databse (since 2017 in France but slowly enforced nationwide).
Each garage contract is different and usually it allows room for a little flexibility indeed (as the insurance cover lending the vehicle to a prospective customer for example so he could consider the cession to be tomorrow and consider it’s “lended” until then)… Just an example not saying he is lying but we’re also insuring lots of garage and I’ve never heard of an “employee only” policy but again this is a wild world out there 
You don’t want to be considering a temporary insurance, in France they cost an arm and a leg like probably 200€ for one day (yes yes… you read the premium properly).
Good luck
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I thought it seemed a bit obscure tbh.
I’d be thinking very carefully just now about whether I would want to deal further with this seemingly unhelpful garagiste.
but, it’s your decision of course.
Thanks for the heads up @fabien
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Yes thank you Graham and Fabien
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I will try and convince the vendor that he can insure me otherwise it will have to wait. In his defence he is technically a mobile mechanic rather than a garagiste so his circumstances may be different.
I can report a happy ending.
I explained to the chap that I was certainly not willing to risk driving 100 kms or so without insurance, could not arrange it today and if he was not able to allow me to drive on his insurance then the sale would have to wait. He explained that he was not really willing to risk his professional insurance as it is his livelihood. That I fully accepted (little choice).
In the end he delivered the car an hour and a half later and the paperwork was completed. I offered to pay delivery fees, at least the fuel costs but he declined saying it was all part of the service and if I have any problems with the car just to contact his garage.
It was even delivered with an almost full tank of gas.
So far from being un-cooperative he proved to be simply a chap who plays by the book and I am very happy with the purchase.
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alls well that ends well.
Thanks once again to Graham and Fabien for helping me get there.
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