Be wary, if someone has your keys and takes your car without your consent, the Swiss Insurance companies consider it Fraud or Embezzlement, and will NOT COVER YOUR LOSS!
Also, if your registration is in the car as the Swiss instruct, someone can take your registration to their Kanton and register the car in their own name, with no evidence of how they obtained the vehicle.
I posted more details in Daily Life.
Thanks a Lot Die Mobiliar, you suck, and you are way too expensive!
fixed that for you.. lets not details get in the way of a good story eh !
im sorry for your situation but lets please stay with the real story and how your loss occurred, to say if people have the keys is fraud is simply not true.
someone breaks into my house , takes the car keys and drives away is not fraud - its theft. re registering the car after being given the keys is fraud, and that's your situation and a huge difference
And for good reasons- it would be just so easy wouldn't it?
Allowing someone to test drive the car without any credit card detail or substantial sum of money is just stupid, sorry.
We are insured with the Mobilière here- really friendly, helpful, knowledgeable, always accessible and the Manager even speaks English, as he lived in the USA. I wouldn't be insured by anaone else- and I am glad my premiums do not go up due to covering above scam. Although, yes, I really feel for you OP- it sucks, but the Mobilière is hardly to blame, really.
I often lend my car to friends and relatives btw- but not to total strangers. Would you allow a stranger to take away to try a 20.000 diamond ring or watch? And then expect to claim on insurance if it walks? Really!
Well yes- but it is a business risk they have calculated and works in their favour, over time. Very different for an individual.
BTW what type of car and value was it?
I had to help a friend sell a car quickly last week, as she was going back to NZ- and she very sensibly accepted a very low value to get shot of it- as leaving it behind for someone else to sell (even me whom she trusts absolutely) was fraughts with difficulties.
Having been in several police controls in the last 19 years in Switzerland, I have always got the grey card from the glove compartment. I was not advised to keep it on me, they were not surprised where it was kept It's clearly not general police advise.
Actually, the insurance broker is the one who told me that I should keep the registration card in the car as it "was required by Swiss Law". Again, part of the reason for me posting these threads, beyond venting, is to hopefully help someone else avoid this problem in the future. If you saw the details under Daily Life, you will know that I made the unfortunate mistake of trusting a co-worker to volunteered to assist me, and I offered him a healthy commission on sale. It sucks, my move back happened very quickly and very unexpectedly, leading to this series of unfortunate events.
Just think, if you were back home and you were confronted with "Licence and Registration", what would happen if you didn't have one or both? ....... it's the same here - a big no-no, not being able to produce.
Only us Brits, have a ridiculous system of not requiring to be in possession of such documents when driving.
I do sympathise with the OP to a certain extent. The law is a bit odd. A friend of mine was showing her car to a potential buyer and the man grabbed the keys and drove off, exchanged the forms and put the car in his name. The police didn't take any action when informed
I have lost mine, which I need to get another one, and have hit 3 different police controls, all in different cantons in the last few months. Each time they were understandable of the situation, and then ran a check on my plates to see if it was stolen; which it wasn't of course.
I have been lucky, though I wish I could find my paperwork.