After being tasked with the job of looking into Carnet costing I thought I had better get cracking straight away. Following on from the really useful info on the gapyear4x4 website I emailed Paul Gowen, ‘Carnet Man’ at the RAC (and now the man of the moment in my eyes). An automated reply came back, basically advising he was a really busy chap and would reply as soon as he was able. This being Friday afternoon I wasn’t hopeful. However a reply did come back later that day advising ‘Paul had looked at our website and to call on Monday to discuss’!
This I did and had a very informative, useful and extremely pleasant chat regarding: our (tentative) departure date, vehicle (he has had previous dealings with Anton and Liz at OEC and says Hi) and motivation for the trip.
The Carnet will need to assure the vehicle valued at (a guestimate) £15,000; this being the price proffered by Paul after 14 months depreciation on the purchase price. Therefore for Egypt we are looking at £120,000 as the amount that will need to be covered by way of a bond/insurance policy (remember 800% of the value).
Paul has given me the number for LloydsTSB to see what terms they will offer and also explained that it is also possible to only invoke the ‘Egypt Carnet assurance’ for the time spent actually there, which would be a further saving in the quarterly charge(s) that the bank would levy over the whole trip [duration].
Other options were also discussed so I now need to get on with some other calls to see if we can being our Carnet costs down.
Paul also pointed me in the direction of some other websites which maybe of interest plus some organisations that it would be worthwhile contacting.
We are now filed under the 2011 trips along with the figures provided and Paul has generously added our website to his favourites lists (have I mentioned what a nice chap he is?)
We left it that I would certainly be in touch and I hope he enjoyed the 2 rolls that he was going to have for his lunch [when I eventually let him off the phone].
So the good news is that we could, if everything falls in to place, be able to secure the Carnet for an outlay that might be as ‘low’ as £2500 ish – which is MUCH better then we originally thought. Certainly it’s significant enough to our now being able to aim at 2011 rather than defer to 2012!
A valuable phone call indeed! Great service RAC and Paul in particular.