The Cheapest Roadside Recovery Article Discussion Area

parsons1927

I doubt I have come across a worse company to deal with.

I broke down on the M1 on a journey from cardiff to leeds. The local garage arrived promptly enough but thats when the fun and games started.

The head gasket had blown on my car and it was going to need major work done. I thought I was covered for onward travel, how wrong was I. They refused to take my car back to Cardiff saying it had to be fixed locally. The garage could not book it in until 3 days later and I would have to drive back to Nottingham (where I broke down) to collect it 3hrs each way or stay in a hotel locally (£40 per night provided by First call), which was neither practical or realistic

I had a massive argument with them saying I was covered for the onward journey but they kept quoting the small print in the policy and basically onward journey means a train journey. I kept explaining that I had a car full of luggage and going by the train was not an option. I eventually managed to get a hire car out of them and drive back to Cardiff.


The car was fixed and I had to collect it from Nottingham, got a hire car to drive there and back which was covered by the policy. (or so I thought)


I sent the receipts in an low and behold they are witholding payment because we exceeded the 1 hr labour charge with the pick up truck. This was because I was stuck in a service station having a blazing row with Firstcall over my policy. In essence my policy was not really worth the paper it was written on, the tow truck took me about 5 miles off the motorway and that was it:mad:

It looks like in this case you pay for what you get for , a cheap 2nd rate service and judging by some other peoples experiences I am not the only one.

I can not emphasise this enough;


AVOID FIRSTCALL LIKE THE PLAGUE

lynseydee

Does anyone have any experience of Europ Assist? I have just taken out a policy through the website that someone put on here as I liked the price. I know it was mentioned that you could get a good deal through insuresupermarket but I couldn't seem to get the price quoted on here. The price I have paid is only a few pounds more though so I am still happy. Would still like to know if Europ Assist are any good though.

suepd

We've just tried to purchase European cover through Quotelinedirect. Our cover runs out today and we are going to France on Tuesday. For some unknown reason, the European bit of the cover can't start until 10 days after the start of the policy. We did email to query this and got back a rather ambiguous reply that we would be covered (but didn't say from when)so 'phoned (0870 number) and after being transferred 4 times eventually were told that we wouldn't be covered and they couldn't change it.

So if you start your policy and actually want to use it abroad soon after, don't bother with Quotelinedirect!

dunc_2-2

hi all,
I'm looking into roadside recovery as my current policy is about to expire (directline rescue 150quid:eek: )
but I'm going to be in france for the school summer holidays & it seems that most policies although quote 90 day cover for europe per year only allow 21 or 31 days as a maximum single trip duration
my current policy allows the whole 90 day allowance in 1 trip

so does anyone out there know of a company that allows longer than a month abroad that beats direct line rescue?

cheers dunc

jpr1312

We also had the misfortune to breakdown - but in France!!! And that was when we wished we'd read the small print more thoroughly. Their policy is to only repatriate your car if it cannot be fixed in a local garage. Our problem was compounded by the fact that the car broke down with a fault (also the cylinder head gasket) that we'd 'supposedly' had fixed at a local garage here in the UK only 3 weeks prior to the trip, with a year's warranty for the repair. So of course we didn't want the car fixing by a French garage as we'd already paid a garage in the UK to have the job done and wanted to take the car back to them to get it fixed properly this time!!!

But as the gentleman below found out, we were just quoted that as there was a garage nearby that could fix the car, they had fulfilled their part of the agreement by towing it to that garage. In our case the car was going to take 15 days to be repaired, and they would have paid up to £100 towards the cost of going back to France to pick it up (also not very practical or realistic)!!! So we had to pay £800.00 ourselves to get the car back from France and we have yet to submit the receipts for the homeward journey so I can't pass any comment on their response regarding those. Our car was also fully loaded, with my husband's work tools and some booze, which all had to be left in the car in a compound till we could arrange the car transporter to pick it up.

Needless to say, even though our policy with First Call has another 6 months to run, we have already taken out a 'proper' breakdown insurance with Norwich Union!!! And just for your info, we're also taking the garage who 'supposedly' did the repair on the car to court, in the hope that we can reclaim some or all of what their dishonesty has cost us.

So if you think you've got recovery with First Call - think again!!!

parsons1927 wrote:

I doubt I have come across a worse company to deal with.

I broke down on the M1 on a journey from cardiff to leeds. The local garage arrived promptly enough but thats when the fun and games started.

The head gasket had blown on my car and it was going to need major work done. I thought I was covered for onward travel, how wrong was I. They refused to take my car back to Cardiff saying it had to be fixed locally. The garage could not book it in until 3 days later and I would have to drive back to Nottingham (where I broke down) to collect it 3hrs each way or stay in a hotel locally (£40 per night provided by First call), which was neither practical or realistic

I had a massive argument with them saying I was covered for the onward journey but they kept quoting the small print in the policy and basically onward journey means a train journey. I kept explaining that I had a car full of luggage and going by the train was not an option. I eventually managed to get a hire car out of them and drive back to Cardiff.


The car was fixed and I had to collect it from Nottingham, got a hire car to drive there and back which was covered by the policy. (or so I thought)


I sent the receipts in an low and behold they are witholding payment because we exceeded the 1 hr labour charge with the pick up truck. This was because I was stuck in a service station having a blazing row with Firstcall over my policy. In essence my policy was not really worth the paper it was written on, the tow truck took me about 5 miles off the motorway and that was it:mad:

It looks like in this case you pay for what you get for , a cheap 2nd rate service and judging by some other peoples experiences I am not the only one.

I can not emphasise this enough;


AVOID FIRSTCALL LIKE THE PLAGUE

nemo183

lynseydee wrote:

Does anyone have any experience of Europ Assist? .

Well, all I can say is that their admin stinks. My son has just renewed with them - well sort of. He's sent them a cheque, which they've cashed. His bank have shown him a copy of the cashed cheque. However, they haven't sent him a policy renewal confirmation, because they say he hasn't paid.

Both he and I have spent hours on the phone to them trying to sort out the problem, with zero success.

I guess every now and then things will go wrong, but they don't seem to have any procedure or system for sorting things out.

chrisk_2-2

Have just joined Auto Aid (£32) after seeing the tip on M M T. My renewal from RAC personal based cover for my husband and myself was £161. A £129 saving for one phone call has got be value for money. Thanks Martin

jackiegibbo

hello everyone,
just to let you all know that today i phoned up the AA to say i wouldnt be renewing my membership (joint cover) for roadside relay and low and behold i got a 30% discount. It definitely pays to haggle with them, i told them that i was going to switch to the rac. And to cap off a really good day i managed to reduce my car insurance policy by £200 just by clicking on the confused.com link on this fab website

lynseydee

Thanks Nemo183. I actually got the cover through a third party so hopefully I won't have the same problems as your son.

Dammam

Optimist wrote:

Now thats interesting. What happens if your car isnt supplied with a spare tyre ?
My wifes car only comes with four tyres and a couple of bottles of that puncture repair foam instead of a spare. I believe there are quite a few new cars like that nowadays

A work colleague had to call out the RAC last weekend. Her Peugeot was not supplied with a spare - just the foam stuff. Tyre was beyond help so the RAC took her to the nearest tyre place to get a new one.

Incidentally, I've just got basic Green Flag cover through Quidco for (I think) £34.95 minus £20 cashback = £14.95.