Bought a car

We bought a car. It's a used car. I think we all know the reputation of used car salesmen in the states, so I found myself thinking about my own unconscious bias toward that reputation. The dealer here seemed completely different from that mentality. For example, he let me test drive, by myself, without taking a license or any of my contact info. He was very detailed when speaking about the pros and cons of each car we looked at. It seemed quite decent and balanced. I felt comfortable. The negotiation was easy, I gave a price lower than the sticker and he said sure. Guess I should have gone even lower! 

He helped me understand taxes and insurance. He was even careful to not overly recommend any specific insurance provider, when it would have been very easy to go into gossip and rumuor about providers. 

Taxes were easy, go online, type in car info, pay your taxes, done. Insurance, on the other hand, was not easy. They have "compare" websites as they call them here. It looks like you can compare anything from vacuum cleaners (known generically as hoovers) to car insurance to everything in between. This is the recommended approach for finding things. So I searched. I had not heard of any of the company names that came back as good options, so I started googling "top 10 car insurance" and similar searches. Sure enough, these companies weren't even listed in "top 50" lists that I found. So I tried different compare sites and eventually found one that came back with more reputable names. Even still, the site said that most of these places wouldn't insure us. Uhoh.

One company looked reputable and willing to insure international drivers, so I went to their website. I went through an online form and at the end it said nope sorry, can't insure you. So I tried another company and it worked! But I wasn't comfortable because their drop downs didn't exactly ask for international info, so I wasn't confident. I called them Monday morning and heard the bad news that they also were not willing to cover us. The payment would be refunded and the policy immediately cancelled. 

Well now it's starting to get frustrating, so I called our internal company experts, and started really asking around for help. I called the number one rated company  and asked for their guidance as well. Matching their reputation, they were great. They were willing to cover us, but at quite a cost. Later, by asking colleagues, I learned they're charging us "teenager rates". I called back and was able to negotiate slightly better rates, and now we're inspired to get UK driving licences because our rates will noticeably go down.

We're driving and insured and taxed! Sure we always were in our rental (hire) car, but now it's really us. Look out open roads and areas of outstanding natural beauty - and everywhere else - we're on our way!