Claiming police recovery fee back from breakdown cover???

bigandy_3

My car's auto transmission failed on Monday night, in the worst possible place in my town with the result that the car was partially blocking a main junction at rush hour and could not be pushed out of the way as its drive wheels were locked.

The police appeared just as I was on the phone to the RAC, advising them that the car was immovable and was in a dangerous position. The RAC quoted me a 90 minute wait for a suitable lowloader to move the vehicle.

The police also called their recovery team and said that whichever service was first on the scene would be used. It was the police's low loader which turned up after an hour.

The three police officers in attendance told me that the £105 fee payable to the police team would be recoverable from the RAC, as they had been unable to help me in time. They gave me the police incident number for this purpose.

Has anyone had any experience of making such a claim against the RAC or AA?

My terms and conditions booklet leads me to believe that the £105 fee is my loss, but I'm still going to write to the RAC enclosing the police recovery service's receipt and quote the police incident number and my disappointment in their service.

Comments welcome.
-andy

greenwich

Interesting one. I've never heard of anything like this. The RAC do not guarantee any particular response time (no one else does either as far as I know). You would only have a claim against them if they took a completely unreasonable time to come out. In this case, given it's the rush hour, 90 minutes is well within reason.

If you're lucky you might get something from the RAC as a goodwill payment, but you have no right to a refund of the £105. I wonder what would have been your legal position if you had refused to pay the police?

J_P_S

if the car is blocking the road the police will request a breakdown truck come out and £105 is the standard fee.

as far as i know, if its not paid you dont get the car back, and then they charge you storage costs £12 a day i think.

and i dont think the police get the money either, it goes to the breakdown company.


i suspect somewhere in rac's t&c's it will say they wont pay for this.

a letter of complaint never hurts though, if you dont ask you dont get

cabrioman

it is very common for the police to get a cut!!

bigandy_3

I wrote to the RAC about this, hoping I might get a portion of the recovery fee back as a gesture of goodwill - but no! I received a courteous letter back, explaining that the RAC always do their best but the circumstances of the incident were just my bad luck.

Oh well - it was worth a try.

-andy

terrierlady

if the garage is part of the police scheme the fee is payable to the garage but goes to the police.
Garages do not like having to be the debt collector.
£12 per day is the normal storage charge.