Campbells

Vehicle insurance in NZ:

The recent member posting about their accident has prompted me to offer this info in case you are not aware:

In NZ it is not like the UK in that you have to have insurance on the road. I would strongly recommend that you actually take comprehensive insurance for your vehicle (if less than $3000 – not) here in NZ.

With my wife’s first car we had a young chap pull out right in front of us and we had out wee lad (2 at the time) in the car too. We had insurance on the vehicle but only third party and after much arguing with the insurance Co they paid our $3k. The vehicle was written off which the Insurance Co got the money for at an auction and we are out of pocket for about $5 k on the car. The other driver was not insured and it resulted in a bloody ongoing nightmare for 18 months now.

We were at court twice and both times the young chap didn’t show up. The latest ( for last three months) is that the Insurance Co are saying that they can not find those guy to get some sort of order out of him as it was made at court.

So my advice is that the difference between 3rd party and fully comp go for it as it is not necessarily your driving that causes the accident.

Worth thinking about.

pixi-dust

Another interesting one - and this may be the hire car insurance but when we had a hire car we were smashed into from behind by a guy with no insurance. He did stop and everything, and he is paying off the cost of the damages by a small amount each week.We had to pay the whopping $1500 excess and are last in line to get it back. if he pays every week and on time we worked out it will take till the next millenium for us to get anything! So it may be worth paying the extra for hire car insurance to lower the excess.

cherry

We use State insurance here ,my RVR costs $295 and the wifes toyota cynos is $250,both fully comp and they accepted our full no claims from the UK.Only condition is we pay the first $500 as we are still on UK drivers licences.
No way would we ever drive without it here ,too risky

Maz

Is that every 3 months, 6 months or every year?

cherry

That is per year,much cheaper than the UK was and its fully comp

Littletoe

I wouldn't have usually driven without insurance! I had the quote, all I needed was a policy number from my previous insurance in the UK. Which my parents were going to email me. It was a Honda Integra 1994 and I was quoted $259.88 for the year, with a $400 excess, AMI quoted me a bit cheaper, but they took a while to get back to me. Our car is only fit for the scrap heap, but I have no idea how much I'm going to have to pay the other driver. Its bloody frustrating that I was a day away from being insured. Accidents happen here all the time, no matter how careful a driver you might be, drivers here simply don't check blind spots or aren't even aware of other road users. I'm not having a go, I was a bloody idiot for taking my eye off the road for second. Luckily no one else was injured, or else I might have ended up being sued.

Ah, god, bugger.

Maz

*faints!* Holy cow! NZ$295 a year for fully comp?

My car is a 2005 Ford Focus and it's US$340 every 6 months! That's about NZ$1,000 a year...

Campbells

We converted our licences to Kiwi within a couple of weeks of getting here. Dead easy, you get the book and read up re the road signs etc and then you sit a written.

I think it was about 80 questions and multiple choice. We did ours through the AA and they were great. Took about ten minutes. If you did fail you can re-sit it again immediately for about $10 or something silly like that.

I would look into your insurance cover as we were advised to do this ASAP as apparently insurance Cos can get funny if you do have an accident and on a non-kiwi licence. The other thing is that I heard talk of them changing this and conversions being made to sit the whole test rather than just a written one.

We are both fully comp (I learnt!) and we paid last month $397 for my wife’s 95 RVR for the year. That’s in Auckland where I believe the premiums are higher.

Just on the insurance note. We also took out health insurance for the whole family and that costs us $118 p/month. It is one of those things but the way we look at it is we needed an op or something like that.

Note: We are with AMI and when I went to pick up my wife’s car I would not drive it from the agents until I knew I had cover (after our experience). AMI were good like that as you phone them freefone, once they have the vehicle details you are covered immediately and when we very first took cover they did the same and offered us the no claims bonus and if we couldn’t prove our previous history they would have reversed to a higher rate. So we got covered straight away over the phone.

We also took out household through AMI which again, do we really need? But after our previous lesson we now look at the rainy day potential and today it is pouring up here in Auckland.

Gee I hope it is going to clear up as our wee lad has his birthday party on Sat.

RobClubley

I'm with AMI and my Skoda costs $501 a year to insure, fully comp, protected no claims and an agreed value of $30k
I think having a turbo petrol engine adds a fair bit to the cost

southerner

Actually that is unlikely - love it or hate it the ACC scheme covers personal injury.

SirEglamore

Just paid $ 314 fully comp for a 2.8 turbo diesel mitsubishi jeep thingy.got discount cos the mrs and house and contents with same firm. (State)

sky

I was about to say the same

Hang11

Might be worth going to the dealer and getting a three year warranty on it too.

I pay $550 a year for a Nissan Cefiro SW and a Mitsi 4wd, fully comp, $250 excess.

lardyl

"covers" being something of a loose term...... I could mention the word "peanuts" again but might be shot down for it......

yes, even on HBC we are paying State a bit more for a little Mazda Demio bus thingie ......hohum.....

DiffordA

We have just got ourselves a cheeky little Rav4 4wd 1994 and it cost us £508.20 for the pair of us (Both 27) fully comp! We were very pleased with that.

Could someone explain the whole UK - Kiwi license thingy fully so we can get on with it?

Thanks all.

PS. Just experienced coming from South Auckland through the city at rush hour, THAT SUCKED!!! And it raining loads! But still luvin it!

Amy