Used to be that if you were a member of the AA in the U.K you could simple swap your membership over. I swapped mine & it got me Silver RACQ membership.

I used to have UK AA cover and it ticked all of the boxes for me but over here I'm struggling to find any cover that's worth having. For example, take a look at this prize offering: http://www.budgetdirect.com.au/roads...nce/index.html. The plus is there's no sign up fees but its for barely any cover at all - more like roadside false confidence Just gotta love their main selling statement, I wonder how many times that happens

Just renewed my motor insurance for which the old company wanted $550 to renew. I managed to get it for $419 from a rival. Contacted the original provider to get the no claims certificate and they said "Oh look, we've just checked and discovered that we are able to reduce your premium to $440!".

Can I ask who did you go with? My insurance premium has gone up by $200.

From AAMI to Budget Direct

Tnx, I'm also checking Bingle, they've also come good, but don't know if they are any good.

That was my view when I saw the coverage levels in Oz. Well, actually my view was "you've got to be joking" - the country is bigger, but they want to limit how far they would take you, where they would act at all, etc. - all for more than the price in the UK. Frankly they'd need to be talking 1000km here, not 20km.

Laughable customer focus, as per Oz usual.

I used comparethemarket.com and several other comparison web sites but they all returned identical results. My conclusion is we have to recheck for the current best deals every year. Something I've noticed is a lot of the companies auto renew so if you change provider you need to call the old provider to cancel. That's not unique to Aus, though - I once got stung in the UK with that.

Yes I've done that, as they wouldn't bring the price down, I must insure my car by the 5th of April, I've got couple weeks to go, I found AAMI was one of the most expensive ones.

With Budget Direct, something I've noticed is if you raise your excess then the premium reduces by around 50% of the excess increase.

Tnx will check that, I use to be with them, but they put their price up, so changed them to Coles, how funny if I go back to them, like yoyo.

What amazes me most of all is the Aussies must be accepting it

Just looking at return flights out of here and they're twice the price of return flights starting from the other end

That's a bug bear of mine. The excuse is the cost of refuelling. It's Bullshit all flight fuel at both ends & the stop in the middle. Ergo they all pay the same for their fuel.

I have to make three trips to South Africa over the coming couple of years so I'm looking at possible ways to get around the rip off. One idea is to head to Asia for a family holiday. From there take a single flight to SA and then book return tickets from SA to Aus which costs only $1000 a piece from that end - $1600 from here, meaning break even for trip 1 and $600 saving each for trips 2 and 3.