Buying a Car Help!

[JasLia]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the forum, so this may have been brought up before but I couldn't find anything that directly answers my questions!

My husband and I recently moved to Calgary on a working visa, we need a car to get around and to work. We found a good car on kijiji for $4k, but then when shopping around for insurance we were told we need a Canadian drivers licence (we currently have Australian ones) and because we haven't got a insurance record in Canada, we were told we need to pay $3k++ upfront to the insurance company.

My questions are:
- Where do we get a Canadian licence?
- Is it simple? Does it cost money?
- Is there a way around getting a cheap car without paying almost the same price in insurance??

Any help would be greatly appreciated! We don't have friends here so it's proving to be hard trying to sort all this out
Thanks

 

[Regina]

Where do we get a Canadian licence?

-
What provice are you in?

Is it simple?

- How long is your driving experience?

Does it cost money?

Yes, it is.

Is there a way around getting a cheap car without paying almost the same price in insurance??

It does not depend on a car (however, for newer, expensive car insurance will be even higher) but on the driving history, age, gender, area in a town where you live...

 

[JasLia]

Thanks Regina.

We are in Calgary... We have had our licences for over 10 years in Australia and only just moved to Calgary a few weeks ago.

When getting a quote for insurance over the phone, even though we had insurance in Australia and can get driving history from them, they told us that doesn't count - only what counts is driving history in Canada - which we have none of!

Because of that reason alone, the quote went from $1600, to over $3k. Upfront. They won't let us pay monthly either as we don't have a Canadian credit history either.

Which like I said, it almost the same amount as the car was so seems a bit excessive

 

[Regina]

can get driving history from them, they told us that doesn't count - only what counts is driving history in Canada

Yes, a usual practice in Canada.
There is a site of Service Alberta where you can get all info:
http://www.servicealberta.gov.ab.ca/Drivers_Licence.cfm

Also, try at least a couple of insurance companies.

 

[dalibor]

you go to Service Canada and they should recognize your AUS driver's license and give you Canadian one, if not, you will have to make written test and driving test, you can buy pretty good used cars on Regal auction for really cheap price, they sell there cars that are bank confiscations, police yard vehicles, lease returns etc. For insurance don't let them scam you, I've been paying 580$ per month in Toronto for '92 Acura , I moved to Saskatchewan 2 months after that and ever since I'm paying 88$ for same car, same experience, call around for reasonable pricing. I had Croatian driver's license (Europe) with 9 years of driving experience, and they made me do the road test with automatic lol