Episode 34: Chaos, Catastrophes, and Insurance

Lions and tigers and bears, OH MY! Okay, well it's maybe not that serious, but vandals and fires and break-ins, oh why?!? These are the issues that host, Chandra Alley covers today as she tackles the topic of insurance.

Listen in for solid advice and crazy anecdotes about why it's important to make sure you are properly insured as an expatriate. And NO, this is not a sales pitch, promise!

Plus stay tuned for a super fun "Chan Select" that is a throwback to prohibition and flapper girls. You don't want to miss it!

• This episode's "Chan Select": No Entry
• Follow us on Instagram: @Expatriotical
• Episode Reference: Episode 12: Take it at Your Pace with Michelle Packer and Episode 23: Moving Abroad and Travel as a Solo Girl with Nikki

"Live and Travel in the Know" with Expatriotical!

Transcript

Bienvenue, Benvenuti, and Welcome to Expatriotical, the podcast for expats, travelers, and other adventurous souls. I’m Chandra Alley and after living as an expat with my husband and 4 children in two different countries for 6 years, I’ve learned the arts of pivoting during pitfalls, traveling tastefully for less, and soaking in amazing new cultures without losing your own.

Join me, as we dive into the joys and challenges of travel and the expat life in every episode!

Hello everyone, fancy meeting you here! Actually I am super glad that you are listening today, whichever day that may be not only because I really appreciate your support and listenership, but also because this episode might be super helpful or informative for you.

I kind of have been putting it off, because it’s a bit of an “adulting” type topic and may not seem as exciting or fun as some of the others, but because it is about something so essential and comes with some crazy stories, I thought that I should go ahead and dive into it.

So what is the topic I am alluding to? Insurance. In a couple of its many forms. So to start with, let me say that I am not an insurance salesperson, nor have I ever been. I view insurance as a necessary evil, I used it only slightly in its car form in my twenties, and that’s about it. I also want to say that I will not be touching on or talking about medical insurance, because that is its own beast.

And with that said… When we lived in the Seattle area we had renter’s insurance, then when we bought a condo and we had homeowner’s insurance, and once we rented the condo out, we got landlord insurance. And in the Dallas area we had renters insurance and of course car insurance (and we had car insurance in Seattle of course) and medical insurance, which as I just mentioned is the variety we will not be talking about today thankfully.

But then when we got to Italy, we did something different. Chris's employer offers two different options for getting a car, one where we pay his company or really it's taken out of his paycheck, a certain amount and then they lease the vehicle and take care of all of the maintenance and insurance and everything like that. And then the other option is where they give us a certain amount of money and we do everything ourselves.

So we decided when we moved to Italy that to relieve some of the stress we would go with the first option. And I think that that is part of the reason why during our time in Italy, we never had renters insurance. I do not recommend that. Because we never had to go find or buy car insurance or go to an insurance agency, as it was already taken care of for us.

Trust me, it's something that I did look into, but when I asked other people where  they got their insurance they got it through USAA or they spoke enough Italiain to figure out how to dive into that whole process, but we did not and then I kind of forgot about it. And so literally by God's grace, we never had any issues happen in Italy with the home that we rented.

Fast forward to moving to France. We decided we would put our big boy and big girl pants on and buy our own car. Now this is where Chris and I differ, because I have regretted that decision because there has been a lot of work entailed with that, but he still thinks it was a good idea. Regardless, all of the maintenance and finding and purchasing insurance, has fallen to us.

And once again, when we moved here, we did not speak the language. We discovered that in France things are quite a bit different in acquiring insurance, especially car insurance than they are in America.

For one thing, in France, the insurance companies want to have your entire driving history or driver’s record. And in America, you do not have to have your entire driving record to get insurance now granted companies will still insure you here, but the premium will be really high. Unfortunately, for us, we could not acquire our entire 22 years of driving history, so and I'm not going to tell you how much we pay for insurance, let's just say we pay probably double or triple what we paid for, for two cars in America for our one vehicle here.

And some people might say well, there's a fantastic public transportation system in Paris why buy a car? And that would be a fair point, but for Chris to commute to his office via public transportation, it takes about 2 1/2 hours one way, yes he has done it. So you can see our need for purchasing a car because then it's only 30 minutes drive.

At this point, it's just one of those things, the cost of the car insurance that is, that we've had to suck up and say “well we have to have it” (but it does hurt a bit to pay such high premiums.)

Regarding renters insurance, in France it is actually obligatory to have renters insurance before you can move into your apartment (at least that what our contract had). And maybe it was before they could even finalize the lease. I don’t really remember. Those details are a bit blurry for me as it was a hectic time.

But thankfully, we were able to save a little bit by bundling the car insurance, and renters insurance. Now some of you may listen and think well of course you just need those things so you suck it up and get through, and that's true you do need them, and you do suck it up and get through, but when things you need come with such a big sticker shock, it can leave a bad taste in your mouth and force you to make cuts elsewhere.

Now let's move on to the part where I tell you why it is so very necessary to have insurance. My first story begins in December of 2022 less than six months after we moved into our apartment.

Actually, let's go back a little bit and say that shortly after we had moved into our apartment in September 2022, the people that had been living above us moved out. Literally within days. So for the first several months, we had no neighbors above us. Then we started hearing rumblings and construction happening in December, and found out that another family would be moving in above us.

In France, people are pretty much allowed to do whatever they want to an apartment as long as they restore it back to the way it was, if the owner does not like the changes that are made. And so for our neighbors above us, they did quite a bit of work. There was a lot of sanding of the floors, which I'm sure probably needed it, and demolition, which resulted in an entirely new kitchen being installed.

During the installation of said kitchen, I'm assuming some plumbing work was done. And one evening I noticed that there was water on my floor. I wiped it up and went on. When I came back half an hour later, there was another puddle in the same spot, and I looked up and saw that water was dripping from the door frame onto the floor.

I put a bucket down and told Chris and we both came to the conclusion that something was leaking in the upstairs and had gone into the walls and into our apartment. The next morning that bucket had a few inches of water and I contacted the Gardienne and she was able to get the contractors to stop the leak. But the damage was done. We ended up having water damage in the ceiling of our kitchen, the wall around the door frame, the door frame itself, and the shared space in the laundry room.

And this is where things became more interesting. Because apparently I was the one that needed to make a claim to my insurance company, and then they would confer with the insurance company of my neighbors, whom I had never met, and they would all work out how things would get paid and how to move forward.

To make a long story short, it took months for them to talk to each other, and then get in contact with the owner of the building, and get all the necessary people out to survey the damage, assess it, and have it worked on. And things had to dry first before they could be repaired. So in June 2023 the damage was repaired and literally the next week we went on vacation. When came home we discovered that some of the work had bubbled and needed to be repaired. Thankfully, the company that had done the work had said if we needed we could call they came the next day after I called and they fixed everything.

Our next experience with using our renters insurance came in February of this year when I went to move a stool in the guestroom, which also serves as my office and the office where I record this podcast and happened to see something behind the dresser. I moved it and looked and the plaster had cracked and peeled away from the wall. Water damage again. But the weird thing is that we don't use the guestroom bathroom (like at all. I don’t even use the toilet in there and this is my office) and we also rarely have guests.

So I reached out to the new property management company of the new owners of the building. They sent someone out to look at it and scheduled for a plumber to replace something that had broken in the bathtub. And then they said that I needed to file a claim to have the damage repaired. I was slightly dumbfounded because I didn't cause the damage and I also didn't own the apartment, but I was told and verified it with other native French people that in France, the renter is responsible to repair the damage even if they did not cause it.

As this is the opposite as it is in America, I was let's just say way more than frustrated. But I commenced in once again, filling out the confusing claim form by hand to have somebody come, fix the wall in my guest room, and once again in June, this time of 2024 a gentleman came out and did a lovely job repairing the damage.

So you can see why it is my belief that having renters insurance is an absolute necessity, apparently especially here in France.

A final story about renters insurance, and actually the one that reminded me that I needed to do this episode, comes from some dear neighbors that just moved out of the building last month. Due to the selling of the building to the new owners, some of the occupants were asked to leave so that their apartments can be prepared for this large company that now owns the building to start selling the units. Fortunately, that did not affect us for some reason, but it did affect our neighbors across the hall. So last month, August 2024, they were forced to move to a new apartment. A week or so ago I texted the husband to check in on them and didn't hear back. I waited a few days, realized I hadn't heard and texted the wife. She text me back with a story that blew my mind.

She said that after arriving in their apartment and getting settled and starting to hang things on the walls (probably about 10 days in), she smelled something funny one day like smoke coming from the dining room area and then suddenly there was an explosion. She got her daughter and they ran out of the apartment. Over three hours and 100 firefighters later, the fire was extinguished.

But much of their furniture, 90% of her wardrobe, and so much more was lost. Currently they are waiting for a specialist to investigate in order to determine which insurance company will be liable. My hope is that since they were so new in the building it will be determined that there was of course something wrong with the electrical box even before they moved in and the owner’s insurance company will have to pay. Hopefully not adding insult to injury after losing everything they have and then having to pay for it too.

Our next story does not take place in Paris. Let's head south to the Mediterranean and the city of Marseille, France. Chris and I went there last October 2023 during the Toussaint holiday, because I was about to turn 40 and really wanted to go somewhere warm and see the ocean. We had planned to use Marseille as our base and then drive to other areas in the region of Provence. As Provence is an area where you really need a car and it's much more difficult and sometimes impossible to access things via train.

On our itinerary, we planned to drive to Axe en Provence, which is where my friend Nikki did her year of study abroad, listen to Episode 23: Moving Abroad and Travel as a Solo Girl, to hear more or a little bit more about that. We also planned to drive to Saint Tropez one day, see the Roman aqueduct at Pont du Gard, the cliffside fortress at Les Baux des Provence, and more.

After our eight hour, and with stopping 9 hour drive from Paris to Marseille. We found our lovely apartment hotel, got situated, and ate dinner. The next day we decided we wanted to go to the large cathedral at the top of the hill called Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde and in typical Alley fashion, we decided to walk there. It wasn't super far and we would get to go through the old Harbor and see a lot of things along the way.

As we headed that direction and started up the hill at a certain point the sidewalk went away, and so we needed to cross to the other side to get to more sidewalk. But there was no crosswalk nor light to help facilitate that. We were also getting close to where there was a T intersection with another side street that also led into the street we were on. So timing the traffic was tricky. At a certain point we caught a break and we all began to run for it, but then another car appeared from that small side street and turned onto the road we were on. They did not seem to notice or care that we were there and I stopped at the last minute, looked to my left and saw that my eight year-old son was not looking as he crossed and I screamed, and he stopped just in time, as I watched as the car barely miss him passing only inches from his body.

Needless to say, I was in tears and so were a few of the other kids as we realized that God had spared us from watching Carson get hit by a car. Somehow we were able to rally and continue walking to the Cathedral. Once we arrived there we discovered that it was closed because it was Sunday and they were having mass. But the view from the hill was gorgeous and so we enjoyed that, got lunch, and explored the city some more that day.

The next day we decided we would go to Axe en Provence, which was a lovely medieval town where we had a delicious lunch, and after decided to go to the coastal town of Cassis, because Carson had had his heart set on doing a cold plunge. To my delight, not only was the weather, but also the water, wonderful. And all my kids, even though they had no swimming suits, got in and enjoyed.

We went back to our accommodations with plans to go to Les Baux des Provence and beyond the next morning. Once we all got around, and ate breakfast and headed out the door it was getting close to 11 in the morning and Chris and a couple of the kids made it out the door, which is normal for us, before I did. Shortly after, I locked up the room, and headed to our underground parking to join them. When I arrived, I was in total shock. The back window of our car had been completely shattered and broken out and as we perused that level of the parking that we were on, so had several other cars. We had nothing in our car to steal. It was completely empty. But Vandals had come through and seemingly selected cars that were from the Paris area, by looking at the license plates and broken windows of those cars and stolen anything they could get their hands on.

For those that do not know there is a huge rivalry between Parisians and Marseillans. And apparently though we are not Parisian or French at all, we were victims of that age old feud. It was clear that we weren't going anywhere that day. So we spoke to the security there and then headed to the nearest police department. When we arrived there, we were told that only one of us could go in. So since I speak the most French in our family, I decided to stay and Chris went with the kids (which was probably the harder job, if I’m honest) to try to clean up the mess and come up with a temporary repair.

I spent the next 7 1/2 hours in a police station in central Marseille to try to get a police report to make a claim with my insurance company. During that time I began speaking to an Italian gentleman who needed help because his passport had been stolen. As I explained to him, in Italian, my situation, and he explained to me his, he ended up speaking German to a man whose wife was one of the first people to finally get to go into one of the offices. And we discovered that our cars, mine and the German gentleman and his wife, had been in the same parking structure and that his wife had had her work computer stolen amongst other things. About seven hours and 15 minutes into waiting both the Italian gentleman and myself were finally called into our own rooms. Thankfully, the police officer that I spoke with spoke English and I explained my situation.

It took him only a few minutes to take down my information and write a report. Exhausted, thirsty, and tired, I headed out around 8 o'clock that evening to join Chris, who was just putting the finishing touches on his really good, if I do say myself, repair job after removing all of the glass, buying tarps and tape and all the things to cover up the back window so that we could make, the drive home in two days. Doing all of this while keeping 4 very excitable and energetic kids from being run over in the parking garage.

While I had waited in that Marseille police station, I reached out to my insurance company and they connected me with a gentleman that might be able to repair my rear or back window. And then I reached out to my friend Nikki, who if you’ve listened to Episode 23 speaks beautiful and fluent French, who was able to call for me and set up an appointment for 2 o'clock the next day to have the window repaired.

So that following day, we once again putted around Marseille, well actually Chris had a really bad headache- I wonder why- so he stayed in the room and I took the kids around Marseille being careful because there were definitely dodgy areas of Marseille to avoid, until it was time for lunch and then we packed them all in and drove with Chris's patch job on the highway to the auto glass repair shop.

Within about an hour and a half the gentleman had replaced our window and it looked good as new. And because this was “in network”, we didn’t pay a dime to the window repair store.

Oddly though, upon inquiring with my insurance company, they didn't actually need the police report I had acquired at all. Which in America, you would absolutely need to have to give to your insurance company.

I will say that we have had to use the car insurance a couple other times, once because I was rear-ended around the time that first water damage was being repaired in our apartment in June 2022, and then more recently in May of this year to damages that were unfortunately my fault.

So in regards to insurance, it's been a while ride for us here in France. But I've been very thankful that we've had it, even if the process isn't the same, it's something that's very necessary and I highly recommend that if you are living abroad and you don’t yet have, especially renters insurance, do your utmost to get it!

OK, now it's time to move on to something a little more fun and that would be this episode’s “Chan Select”! I've been saving this one for the right episode, and I feel like I found the right episode because of all that information was probably useful but not necessarily exciting. But this place is.

We discovered it when some dear friends of ours came from India and were visiting us here in Paris, and also some family as the husband is French and American. Somebody came up with the idea of doing a double date, and so we secured two babysitters for our total of 6 kids combined and headed off first to the barbecue restaurant, Melt, which was the “Chan Select” in Episode 12: Take it at Your Own Pace with Michelle Packer, and then because it was still early when had finished eating and we weren’t ready to go home, we went to a speakEasy called No Entry.

Ironically, No Entry is below the restaurant, Pink Mamma, which was the “Chan Select” in a recent episode, Episode 29: Travel as an Expat.

When you enter the building, if you go to the right, that's Pink Mamma, but if you go left and down the stairs, you'll see a stainless steel door that looks like you're about to head into a walk-in refrigerator or meat cooler. But when you open the door inside, you see low lighting, illuminating, crushed red velvet booths and stools surrounding round pedestal tables. Hundreds of jars filled with plants that look as if they've been pickled or preserved line the shelves casting colors on the walls. The bar is a throwback to the 1920s and from it are served some of the most delicious cocktails I've tasted in Paris.

Their drinks are creative, one of a kind, and their service was excellent. Choose from beverages with names, such as Swinging Tonic, Tropical Loveland, or Afterglow.

Now this is obviously a “Chan Select” that is only for adults, but if you're coming to Paris kid-free, it is worth a stop in! And even if you don't imbibe, they also have mocktails.

I will be sure to include their website in the show notes, and as always, I am not an affiliate, just a patron that had a great time there!

That's it for today everyone, as far as our quote of the day goes, I'm going to leave us with something that I'm not sure has a verified origin, but is useful and it’s also a quote we've all heard. In regards and thinking of Insurance and dealing with the hassles of getting it in another country, it may be a pain but as our quote says, “better safe than sorry”.

Have a fantastic rest of your day everyone thank you so much for listening. A quick favor to ask before I go. If you have not yet subscribed to Expatriotical on whatever listening app or platform you use, would you please do so? And if you have a moment, leave a kind of review? That helps to push Expatriotical up within the algorithm so that people that are searching for this type of content can find us more easily and we can grow this wonderful community.

Thank you so much guys. I can't wait to meet you back here again next week, until then this is Chandra Alley reminding you to “Live and Travel in the Know” with Expatriotical.