GeDe

I know that car insurance is very costly, I also understand that if you can bring a letter from you UK insurance company stating how many years claim free you have (I'm at 6 ish touch wood) then this will help to lower your insurance premiums, so my question is what sort of prices people are paying, so I am 40 years old in May and have 6ish years claim free will be living in or around the Okotoks area and I would like to get a Pickup say a Toyota Tundra 2007 model (yes yes I know a wanna be redneck ) so what would I expect to pay and which company do you recommend.

Almost Canadian

$1200 for two vehicles.

Go to any broker and they will be able to tell you what you need to pay (all insurers will provide the same quote to each broker so no need to shop around). If you go to broker A and obtain a quote, and then go to broker B to obtain a quote, its broker A that gets the commission anyway, at least that is how I understand it to work.

ogcsmith

We went via a broker initially and ended up with ING insurance. They definately accept the whole letter thing. Make sure the letter you bring is as complete as possible e.g. exact dates both start and finish, no claims made, no accidents etc.

jimf

I've used Canadian Direct. They only operate in BC and Alberta. Approx $1000 pa for a Honda Odyssey with two drivers just 40s and quite long no claims history approx 10 years. They accepted letters from UK insurers and assessed at grid step -15. I got the letters from UK insurers before realising Canadian insurers could be quite fussy about the wording so they just said " 10 years no claims bonus" not the start date etc but they still accepted them. You can select the excess which I put quite low so I could have paid less. Without any no claims history the premium would have been over $4000!

Paul5455

i went through a company called dalton timmons
if you are joining the police you get corporate discount, and they also accept the no claims stuff from uk. im under 25 but my insurance is $1300 on a 2008 ford escape.

ogcsmith

It might also be worth trying to combine all your insurance policies with one insurerer. I got all the house insurance etc with the same place and saved about $200 total.

It is a good point about the discount though the workplace. Last year all our insurance costs were $2800. This year we went through the U of A ( where my wife works) and it was nearly $1000 less even with the same company!

david_oz

i'm also with canadian direct

i found them to be the only company that would treat me like an adult. they recognized my australian driving history with very little fuss and saved a fair bit of money (still not cheap mind you)

discussions with the other insurance companies went something like
them: how long have you been driving in north america?
me: never... but i've been driving for 8 years in australia with no incident, here is my driving extract and letters from my insurance companies
them: so that is 0 years driving in north america? that'll be $3-4k, would you like to proceed with the quote??


if you ask me, they should charge you more for insurance the longer you have been driving in alberta. but that's a topic for another day

jimf

On the basis that the longer you drive here the more you drive like the locals? One morning this week there were 4 accidents on the 7 or 8 mile drive to work. Roads were clear weather was fine.

agr

Worth thinking about whether you use your car for work. I travel between my employer's locations in my own car, and that drives up the premium quite a bit. But I would hate to be skewered by one of the many clowns I see on the road, only to have my insurer deny coverage because it happened during my work day. One thing about Canadian insurers, they don't miss a trick when it comes to escaping a claim.

By the way, Edmontonian drivers seem to be at their most agressive during the morning commute. Does this indicate that they are extremely anxious to get to work?

david_oz

absolutely!!!

when i drove in australia i would never speed, never cut people off, never drive around like a complete jerk... but when everyone else is doing it you dont feel so bad about doing it yourself

i feel like i'm becoming a worse driver every day i drive here in calgary

TheMightyBoo5h

Hi, So I asked this exact same question when I went to my insurance company which is All State. I had a letter of no claims from the Uk and they wouldnt accept it. However they did say that if I did an advance driver course for half a day I could claim 2 years no driving experience which really annoyed me. You probably seen the driving standard in Canada. The Uk is much better...we should get a discount! But a work college of mine had a no claims reference from a company he work for and he got the discount!.

I just renewed out insurance and mine is about 1900 for a brand new car and 2 years experience and no claims.

I think we are being scwrewed because of the bad drivers around here. 90% are good but 10% are shockingly bad.

agr

The real problem is that UK insurers allow customers to protect their no-claim discount, and routinely only provide letters showing no-claim discount status (which is not a claim history). So, if you were a Canadian insurer, you would not be able to accept no-claim discount status as any kind of accident-free record. If a Canadian insurer accepts a NCD letter, it's because he doesn't understand the flaw in the UK system.

david_oz

the worst thing is when you talk about it with canadians, they will answer in this matter of fact kind of voice something like "well its because of all the chinese and pakistani immigrants who come here and don't know how to drive"

hello! we have chinese and pakistani immigrants in australia... you have them in the uk, and our driving standards aren't shithouse

its the born and bred albertans who are the problem... and they wonder why their insurance costs so much...

i'd just shop around for the best deal you can get, with whatever letters you can provide from your uk insurer. getting insurance here was just about the most painful process i've had to deal with in my year in canada so far... good luck!

Cdnshaz

Hello!! I get cut off on a roundabout almost daily here, no one gets in the right lane, and NO ONE HERE USES BLINKERS (indicators for you brits) that is my biggest pet peave....they all tail gate, you follow so bloody close I can see the sweat on the drivers brow and sing alone with their radio...Half them can't drive standard even tho most take their test on it, and whats with that, I have driven over 30 yrs but because I didn't take my canadian test on a standard I am only allowed to drive a automatic here...didn't realize the road rules change from one transmission to another, and I do drive standard...and talking about insurance, I brought my cdn records with me when I came here, my insurance was 3 TIMES AS MUCH AS BRITS PAID...I had an old clunker to start with and made no difference....

You get good and bad drivers in both countries, you think Calgary is bad...ever drive in LONDON...they are all crazy there less then 6 inches between vehicles at stop lights....parking on both side of the streets facing any direction you want....they park so close on our street half the time you can't get out, or block the road so that the garbage truck can't get thru to collect our rubbish...so it sits for another week!! God help us if we needed an emergency vehicle to get thru, we would be dead or house burned down, cos they can't get thru..cos no one can park properly in this country!!

agr

All true, but UK road deaths per capita are half Alberta's, even though there are pedestrians and cyclists all over the place. The weather may be less challenging, but I'm not sure half of Alberta casualties are weather-related.