View Full Version : Car Insurance
KerryandAndy
02-06-2007, 22:44
Hi,
can anyone help us, we were trying to buy a car to leave here when we return to the UK, we do not have a florida licience because, and i maybe wrong that it is cancelled each time we leave the USA because we do not have a social security no yet. Any advice?
kerry
chrizzy100
02-06-2007, 22:51
I live in the USA and can't find an easy way to keep a car at my FL home...
The insurance can be crippling ...
If you have your own home and stay 6 month of the
year its doable but for short term not economical
Robert5988
02-06-2007, 23:40
Totally agree with Ray. You would be amazed at how much insurance costs compared to UK if you have decent personal liability; and you would be silly not to have that.
I did consider my brother(who has lived in the USA - not Florida - for many years and has a perfect insurance record with State Farm)) buying a car and insuring it, with me as named driver, and even then it was best part of $2,000 a year. - you can hire a small car for 10 weeks for that sum.
The other thing if you visit frequently is the cost of taxis to and from airport.
KerryandAndy
03-06-2007, 00:33
Thank you guys, i am begining to realise that this is not a financially viable option now, just pleased we didnt go ahead and purchase a car yesterday and sort the insurance out afterwards!
My daughter worked for a year near Miami, as part of her degree course, and had to buy and run a car whilst she was there. The insurance was crippling. It used to be an option to keep a car, but not any more, since you have to keep renewing your licence, which is a real pain.
A social security number isnt relevant in helping you with your license, they want to see either an 1-94 or 1-94W and will only renew to the end of that or if you have a two year 1-94 you now have to renew your license every year. Progressive will take your UK no claims bonus into account. Unless you are going to be there six months a year it isnt really worth it though. And yes it isnt cheap.
It's not all bad news. My neighbours have purchased two Harley's which they keep in a locked store in the garage. They spend about 7 weeks, twice a year in their home. The bikes are insured for the year but they tell the insurance company when they are not in Florida. This results in a return of some of the money they have paid at the end of the year. They just get new licence issued each time they go over so it's no real problem.
Dave
I use Geico, you can get your own quote on the internet on their site. Use a fictitious SSN for the quote. If you actually want to take up the insurance then call them on the phone. They do not in fact require a SSN to insure you. They are helpful and friendly.
Geico have a lower rate for people aged 50 or over - like me.
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We have already had a big and somewhat aggressive thread about this topic which was sparked off by Mrs Babypowder selling her Sebring Convertible.
I have had a Fl licence for over 10 years and fairly basic insurance costs me around three hundred dollars per 6 months for the first car, half that for the second. This is not unlimited comprehensive cover like UK. However Florida is a NoFault state which means it is harder for anyone to sue you for injury. You should not lose your house in Fl for a motoring accident.
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Florida may soon no longer be a No Fault state which means that compulsory premiums will go down around sixty dollars per 6 months. I would suggest spending a bit more than the lowest amount on insurance but not necessarily going over the top.
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Geico do not care that your Fl licence has run out while you are not there. Just get it renewed when you get back.
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I have old cheap cars so don't insure them comprehensively. I have found them reliable although they're old. I do a few thousand miles a year.
If you can't fix them yourself car repairs can add up horrifyingly in Fl just like in UK.Because of the warm climate you can expect batteries to hold up well for a long time but paint and dashtops perish in the sun. Rust should not be a problem for any car which has been kept inland all its life in Fl as there is no salt put on the road in winter.
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I have a big Chevy pickup, a Sebring Convertible and a Harley bike. There is no annual MOT equivalent for any of these in Fl. It is also not a legal necessity to insure any motorbike at all if you don't want to. Just like it's not necessary to wear a crash helmet if you are over 21 unless you want to. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't depending on the trip and the temperature.
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Your annual tax expires on your birthday every year, you can renew online. When you buy a car or bike then you pay a whole years tax for the months running up to your birthday but its very cheap. It will also cost you a oneoff payment of a hundred dollars for a tag (numberplate) the first time you get it for a car, free for a bike.
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When you buy a car in Fl you have to pay the regular sales tax on top of the price, whether its new or secondhand, private or dealer. It would be illegal for the private seller to put down a lower price for tax purposes so you didn't have to pay so much sales tax. All I can say is that if they ever checked you would be well advised to make sure its believable and that any check or bank transfer was for the stated amount.
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As far as taxis to and from the airport are concerned I just book a 1 day rental on this site or another one. It'll cost you about £20 for the 24hours with a full tank of gas and extra driver,pick it up at the airport, drive home and then when you have got your own car out the next day and done plenty of running around to use up your tank of gas just get the wife to drop the rental car back to a local drop off point and pick her up to go home in your own car- there is no fee for oneway rentals in Fl with dollar or alamo.
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When you apply for a Fl license renewal now you will find they give you a bit of paper and the plastic license will arrive in the mail from Tallahassee a month later, with the word "Temporary" across it in red.
When I mentioned this a while ago on this forum I was told it was rubbish but by now there are probably some members here who have such a license.
Robert5988
05-06-2007, 00:59
<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:I have had a Fl licence for over 10 years and fairly basic insurance costs me around three hundred dollars per 6 months for the first car, half that for the second. This is not unlimited comprehensive cover like UK. However Florida is a NoFault state which means it is harder for anyone to sue you for injury. You should not lose your house in Fl for a motoring accident.-
Florida may soon no longer be a No Fault state which means that compulsory premiums will go down around sixty dollars per 6 months. I would suggest spending a bit more than the lowest amount on insurance but not necessarily going over the top.
[/quote]
You obviously have considerable experience of living in the USA, and your post make much sense. However I feel that this section on insurance could be misunderstood.
In UK third party insurance is really the equivalent of the liability insurance in the USA i.e. even with the most basic insurance in UK, if you are at fault in an accident, you are covered for any damages awarded to property and/or life and limb. The comprehensive element is for the damage you might do to your own car.( there are other advantages but that is the main one)
My understanding in the USA is that if you are at fault in an accident and substantial damages are awarded to the 'innocent party' their insurance company will come after you for the money if your cover is insufficient; and you have assets.
This is why there is such a difference in premium between basic insurance cover and getting say $1Million personal liability insurance.
That is exactly the reason why those USA friends/relatives of mine(with considerably assets) carry considerable personal liability insurance.
If you "were unlikely to lose your house" why would anyone bother with any form of liability insurance?
Robert - its likely that your friends/relatives do not live in one of the no-fault states, and/or have considerable assets to protect other than their house.
The term "no-fault" auto insurance is often used loosely to denote any auto insurance program that allows policyholders to recover financial losses from their own insurance company, regardless of fault. But, in its strictest form, no-fault applies only to state laws that both provide for the payment of no-fault first-party benefits and restrict the right to sue, the so called “limited tort” option. The first party benefit coverage is known as personal injury protection (PIP).
Under current no-fault laws, motorists may sue for severe injuries and for pain and suffering only if the case meets certain conditions. These conditions, known as a threshold, relate to the severity of injury. They may be expressed in verbal terms (a descriptive or verbal threshold) or in dollar amounts of medical bills, a monetary threshold. Some laws also include minimum requirements for the days of disability incurred as a result of the accident. Because high threshold no-fault systems restrict litigation, they tend to reduce costs and delays in paying claims. Verbal thresholds eliminate the incentive to inflate claims that may exist when there is a dollar "target" for medical expenses. However, in some states the verbal threshold has been eroded over time by broad judicial interpretation of the verbal threshold language, driving up costs.
Currently 12 states and Puerto Rico have no-fault auto insurance laws. Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania have verbal thresholds. The other seven states — Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Dakota and Utah — use a monetary threshold. Three states have a "choice" no-fault law. In New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, motorists may reject the lawsuit threshold and retain the right to sue for any auto-related injury. Colorado’s law reverted back to the tort liability system in July 2003.
Florida’s no-fault law is scheduled to expire in October 2007 unless reenacted. Insurers would like to see it replaced by a new law based on the tort system because personal injury protection benefits, which pay for medical care and related treatment, have been subject to fraud and abuse. Under the current system, unscrupulous medical clinics and attorneys can run up medical care costs for minor accidents, pushing up the cost of coverage for everyone else. Insurers say that a return to the tort system could save policyholders as much as $250 a year. Lawmakers could not agree on a fix by the end of the regular session but will have one last chance during the special session in June. The state’s governor, Charlie Crist, seems to favor no-fault over a traditional tort system. The Senate passed a bill, S.B. 1880, which would have extended the law through 2012, provided significant additional funding for antifraud efforts and required regulators to carry out a study of the current law. The proposal in the House, H.B. 7215, would have replaced the current $10,000 in personal injury protection with $15,000 in emergency care. The trigger for coverage would have been an emergency room visit. At present any health care claim, whether it comes from a chiropractor or emergency room physician, can trigger benefits, leading to abuse of the system.
A study by the Property Casualty Insurers of America (PCI) shows that auto injury claim costs have risen faster in Florida than the national average. During the first quarter of 2005, the average PIP claim cost shot up more than 17 percent, resulting in an overall increase of 44 percent since 2000. In terms of average auto insurance expenditures, Florida ranked 5th in 2003, up from 7th in 2002, according to data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Among the explanations for soaring costs are a higher-than-average number of office visits to medical practitioners, higher health care costs and more sprain and strain soft-tissue injury cases that are harder to evalu
Robert5988
05-06-2007, 07:45
Anorak,
<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:its likely that your friends/relatives do not live in one of the no-fault states, and/or have considerable assets to protect other than their house.
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Thanks for the detailed response. Wow - lot there I was not aware of.
Two points,
Most owners on this forum would have at least another house in UK by way of assets and some have several STR houses! I wonder if that would be considered worth chasing?
I wonder why there are adverts on local TV from 'ambulance chasing' firms of lawyers asking if you have ever been injured in auto or other accidents - then advert cuts to an example of a woman who 'discovered' she had sustained a whiplash injury from an auto accident. Firm XXX had obtained $yyy for her: From whom I wonder?
Makes you wonder why you need any form of liability insurance in Florida if you have limited assets.
Not disagreeing - just musing!
Robert thats a good point.
Its worth remembering that all alien home owners in Florida have their foreign address details (if they gave them in the first place which may or may not be compulsory, I can't remember) on a public database which can be searched and can even be bought as a CD.
Thats why if you are a Brit owning a home here you receive occasional junk mail at your UK address from realtors and remortgage companies.
It would be easy for any lawyer to look up those details and then maybe take action against your assets in the UK.
I was actually liasing with the Osceola County Property Tax Appraisers Office a year or two ago about this but before I got anywhere the head honcho Bob Day got arrested for all sorts of things so that was the end of that.
I don't think there is any way you can get off that database, there ain't much privacy here.
All I can say is don't give your UK details to anyone here if you can avoid it.
And yes, make sure you have a decent amount of personal injury insurance on your car policy. What is a decent amount? A million doesn't go far if you put soemone in a wheelchair for the rest of their life. Nor does ten million.
I think even rental car insurance - which the big companies often don't actually have with an insurance company, they bear the risk themselves to retain the profit within their own company - has its limits although they are high.
So unlike the UK there is no such thing as risk free driving when it comes to the possibility of a claim being made against you in excess of your policy benefits.