RescueMyCar.com any good?

sonyaj1

RESCUE MY CAR.COM

we broke down in dover after travelling home from spain. we called rescue my car who said the breakdown people would be with us within 45 mins. it took 1 and half hours for someone to turn up. as soon as he found out we lived in norwich, he said he would not be takin us home but could fix it for us. cant fault him at all, he tried for 3 hours and thought he had fixed it. we started driving and an hour later it broke down again with the same fault. we called up again and the woman on the phone tried to charge us another £40 excess. you have to pay excess by the way. we refused to pay again, to which after she had sighed down the phone a lot of times, she said,it was late and she didnt think anyone could help us at this time of night. it was half 8.she said she would call us back within 10 mins. we waited 20 and called again, no answer. called again, no answer. withheld our number and she answered straight away, sighing all the time. she said someone will be with us within the hour. they arrived at 9.20pm and had been told we were to be dropped off locally. we were on A12 about 2 hours from home, 1 hour from dover. he refused to take us home as he finished at 10 but loaded our car up on his truck anyway whilst we were tryin to get the woman on the phone again.she was not answering again.
she then offered to put us up in a hotel but stated that they were all probably fully booked so she was not sure if she could.
the man in the truck said he would take us to his depot, which was apparently on the way, because i asked, and swap drivers with the night driver who could take us home.
we were only 2 hours from home so chose this option instead of maybe a hotel, as she thought they would be booked up anyway.
he then drove us 30 miles back towards london to his depot. 30 miles in the wrong direction, where the nite driver informed us that he had to man the phones till 10.30. we waited till 10.45 and headed on our way. 30 miles back to the A12, yay, we getting there. whilst driving at full speed with our car on the back...the driver was actually texting with one phone and speaking to someone on another phone. both phones in his hand at the same time. went over the white lines, which make the funny noise. scared the .... out of me.
we then pull over so we can all have a fag and when we get back in the truck, me and my boyfriend shut our eyes for a bit as its now really late. when my b/f opens his eyes, he whispers to me...where are we ? where did the bridges come from? i said i dont know, was not paying attention as had my eyes closed. we inform the driver that he has gone 40 miles, yes 40 miles in the wrong direction.
he then tells us, its our fault as we should tell him which way to go, its not his responsibility to know which way to go. he then says that he may go over his legal driving hours and may have to drop us off on the side of the road where we will have to wait for someone else. then he stops talking to us altogether.he does not have sat nav as does not trust them. when i first got in the truck, i asked him if he had been to norwich before and he said yes and that he knew the way.
we keep quiet hopin to get as close to norwich as possible. thankfully he calmed down and as soon as we hit norwich, we asked him to get the car off the back as we will get the rest of the way ourselves. we called the breakdown people at 1.30 saturday afternoon and got home at 2.30am sunday.13 hours....13!!!!
the woman(rachel) on the phone is terrible, sighing down the phone, unhelpful, not answer the phone. the people who they send to help you are unbelievable. do not use this company unless u only drive round ur home town. for proper breakdown they are useless. they are also refusing to give back our excess which i think we are entitled to.

LEO_2012

There is a reason why they are cheaper than others and that is cos the service is non-existent. I broke down in a car park.

It took approx 20 mins to get to talk to someone at the call centre.

They charged me the excess of £40 which is agreed in the policy and then charged me a further £35 to cover for fuel just in-case the car had run out of fuel.

After one and a half hour a recovery truck turned up to take me to a garage even though they promised to send out a mechanic with a recovery truck.

Finally they took the car to a garage (of the recovery firm) and was basically told the fuel pump has gone on the car and I will need to pay £450 which I thought was a joke. I told them to recover my car to a garage of my choice where I know they would not rip me off. It turned out to be an pedal sensor that was the problem that cost in the region of £120 to put right. Need I say more?

I usually do not sign up for cheap breakdowns but this was an exception purely based on price. I was so lucky I was alone and not with the family (little one is just 3 years old) and was able to adapt to the poor weather conditions, standing around and moving from one place to another. etc.

Save yourself some tears and DO NOT sign up with this company, they are rude on the phone and seriously do not have a clue on providing the service required.

Worst nightmare !!! Stay away!

sheg00

If you take Insurance or breakdown cover with these cowboys you have my sympathies, from start to finish they have lied to me? Stole my money? And insulted me? I had what i thought was a full comprehensive policy and the best breakdown cover going only to discover it was not worth the paper it was written on.

I am a single father to 2 young daughters and on the 6th of June 2012 in very stormy weather we broke down on the motorway in appalling conditions my daughters were extremely frightened as was with the traffic hurtling past so much so that just with a picnic blanket covered my children and lead them onto the treacherous banking.

I made the call to RescueMyCar.com hope full that they would get to us quickly, To my horror the guy on the other end said that in order to be recovered i would have to pay immediately £40 to the breakdown man before being rescued i argued that he was mistaken and that i had paid a full breakdown recovery policy that i had already paid for up front, after several expletives and crossed words he said he would not send anyone out unless i paid this £40 i told him i had not enough money with me or credit cards and he asked if i could phone someone and borrow it i tried to reason with him that as i was in the middle of nowhere with two freighted soaked to the bone children perched on the side of a banking in weather of such extreme that i couldn't .

Even begging for help he refused unless i paid this dodgy amount even knowing what a precarious situation me and my children were in RescueMyCar.com refused to help they had effectively abandoned me and my children, luckily a passing motorway patrol came to our rescue even when that guy spoke to RescueMyCar.com and told them how bad our situation was they still refused to help and hung up on us.

I had to have a recovery service come to rescue us on the basis i had no money with me and that they would sort it out after the priority was to get me and my children to safety they were great thank you Mitch Motors for all you kind help.

After this nightmare had ending i complained to RescueMyCar.com and they ignored me, i cancelled my policy and breakdown cover in disgust, RescueMyCar.com required me to send my documents back to them before they would refund me any money owed? They of course didn't citing i had cancelled my policy therefore they were quite within there right too charge me a £50 penalty for doing so and charged my £12.50 commission on this effectively stealing my refund, They also after three requests have still not returned my NCD Bonus which is my property.

SO RescueMyCar.com NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE...if you want to be scammed and ripped off than go ahead try RescueMyCar.com.

JoVal

Hi there

Does anyone have any information about StartRescue? I've just received a renewal letter from RAC for £138.60 for Solutions 3 Roadside & Recovery & At Home Personal Based.

I've done a quick comparison and StartRescue is one of the companies that is offering a far lower price of £59.45 which seems to offer the same cover.

Another one is from Rescuemycar who I've not heard of either, or GEM Motoring Assist?

Can anyone tell me if they've had any experiences, good or bad from these companies.

Thanks

JoVal

Obviously I've now seen all the above posts on Rescuemycar so I'll probably not be taking out their policy, but these others?

A_Mischief_Maker

I have used Rescuemycar recently and have nothing but good things to say about them. I had the national cover plus home insurance with the £40 excess per callout, cost me £28.90 for the year. I called them when my 11 year old car broke down at work recently, they arrived within 20 mins and fixed the car within 10 mins.

I have seen some posts on here that say they have let them down but from what I can tell they have had the wrong cover from the start. They have been incredible value for money for me over the years and came through when I needed them.

I had a work colleague who had AA cover that cost an arm and a leg. He broke down at home (didn't have the right cover) and it cost him an extra £75 for their service, only to have his car towed away from his home so the guy could get to work on it. He paid more for the 'extra' service than I did for my entire policy with the excess!

argofy

a few weeks ago my passat diesel est stalled when in the queue for the severn bridge and after 15 min and being ready to push it out of the queue it miraculously . it then staterd ok after a break in chepstow and got us to york and back to bristol uneventfully. after the next few days not being used it refused to start again and i had to call rmc. they charged me £70 as i was not covered from home. my own mechanic could not handle the issue and the rmc one had no clue. he didnt even know how to manually take off the pushbutton handbrake but suggested a new battery once he'd jumpstarted the car . a week later the car alarmingly completely cut out power when on the m4. the rmc guy had to tow off the motorway first to take a look. and he also didn't have any clue where to look - the handbrake fixed on too. he offered to take me to 'a destination' - garage or my ultimate destination but didnt know where the vw dealer was on the way. rmc office refused to suggest a garage until i pleaded with her to look one up on the internet when i asked her to put herself in my position.
we left the car outside mann&egerton and i phoned them in the morning as i was on my way on a channel ferry that night with my partner. they were fantastic! they identified the problem - simply a £20 relay. so based on my sample of two incidents the rmc service was cheap and useless. no experience with a vw passat which surely is not an uncommon vehicle. i guess you get what you pay for. im sure aa/rac would be better experienced. i think you need more than just a tow truck

guymark

I do not know if it is downright incompetence or a scam, either way I will try and be as objective as you can - you decide.

A couple of weeks ago I purchased a Transit 350 Luton van, fairly good condition, engine spotless and mechanically seems good. As I am going to be using it quite a bit, it seemed to make sense to have breakdown cover just in case.

I googled for "van breakdown service" and found a compare-type site, RescueMyCar seemed to offer great value and did have the three categories of Car, MotorBike and Van. so far so good.

I called them just to verify that the cover was as it seemed £18.90 for a year of cover. I managed to get through quickly and although my car was too old to put on as a "driver cover", everything else seemed fin. I checked my van was ok -as not all places cover lutons and gave my registration. He confirmed what it was and said "no problem".

I completed the registration and payment online, I didn't need documents sent by post so I made sure this optional extra was unticked. Paid up and thought little more about it. I figured the extra amount was VAT at the time - a bit peeved it wasn't declared bu paid it anyway.

Documents arrived by post - seems I had been charged extra for a service I specifically made sure I had de-selected. Ah well for the sake of a couple of pounds I couldn't be botehred to complain.

Checked the small print to see if there were any other conditions (must carry basic tools, first aid kit etc etc etc) and everything seemed fine until I found the size limits.

If anyone knows of ANY luton can that has EVER been made with a road to top-of-box height under 8' I would be astrounded. They sit on a chassis about 3' off the ground and are usually about 7' high.

Ditto, width limit of 6'3" - I have never seen a luton under this, most are around 6'6" to 6'9".

Have repeatedly tried to call during my "cooling off" period to try and either get a refund or confirmation that I *AM* covered. Multiple attempts and still no joy in talking to anyone. I am guessing although the two errors (charging for a service not required and providing cover that is invalid) are theirs, they will still want to charge a £15 admin fee.

So you tell me, when you take the time to call them to clarify that they cover Luton vans - give the registration number and get confirmation that they do - only to find they then bill you for more than was agreed and then DON'T cover you, is that spectacular incompetence or a con job. It has to be one of the other.

Will continue to try and reach them via telephone and their FaceBook page - which I note has a lot of other unhappy people posting there too.

Need to see if I paid by credit card or debit card - as this might make matters easier.

Hate being let down like this - thankfully I found they had let me down BEFORE I needed them on a dark night 100 miles from home.

Miffed - in the extreme.

EdGasket

Have a look at AutoAid. It's £38 per year and they will recover you anywhere you want if they can't fix it at the roadside. It is an insurance however so you do have to pay the recovery fee and claim it back. I called them out once and was recovered about 30 miles. Paid back within 2 weeks. They have mostly good reviews and seem to be a good company. They will cover a couple for the £38 but unfortunately don't do a family deal.

guymark

Thank you Ed, that could be extremely useful, I will give them a try