Any experience of Gem Motoring Assist?

Ologhai

It's fast approaching breakdown cover renewal time for us. The AA has sent out their 'Welcome to another year' letter about a month in advance of our current cover ending, and the cost is £199.50 (joint membership with home-start and relay), which... seems like an awful lot of money to me!

Shopping around, I found Gem Motoring Assist, and their site gives me some confidence that they're okay (recent winners of awards etc. and similar average call out time to other firms including the AA) and they offer equivalent joint breakdown cover (home assistance, onward travel) for £84.50 (with I think another £5 off if I choose to arrange a yearly direct debit to pay it, which I would be happy to do).

I was wondering if anyone has any experience of Gem Motoring assist, good or bad? £120 is a large difference, and in a way it's hard to imagine it's all down to AA's name -- are Gem really as good?

Thanks in advance for any views.

pstuart

We were with them some years ago - we had a problem with a tow in driven by a mad recovery driver.

Complained to GEM about vetting their garages properly and was promptly thrown off the scheme (they sided with the garage).

Found plenty of discounts and deals from other proper professional organisations and ended up with a good deal from one of the leading names.

You pay peanuts and get !!!!!!!!!

hethmar

Use topcashback for RAC or Greenflag

Ologhai

hethmar wrote: »

Use topcashback for RAC or Greenflag

Or use it for Gem? (That brings it down to £65!)

AlwaysPondering

We use our Tesco Clubcard points to get RAC.. Have done this for the last 3 years or so..

Ionkontrol

http://www.rescuemycar.com/Breakdown/

Lum

I use GEM. Like most recovery companies that aren't the AA or RAC they contract it out to local firms, in my case the local recovery firm is Dragon Rescue who the RAC used to use when they didn't have any vans anyway.

Things I like:
The card has both a freephone and a geographic landline number on it, so you can use your free minutes when calling from a mobile.
You get a free subscription to KeyGuard, which gives you a little fob to put on your keyring with instructions to the finder that gives them a £10 reward for returning your keys.

Things I dislike:
Their call centre aren't able to accept GPS co-ordinates so I ended up having to talk the call centre operator through going to google maps and following the route I'd driven when I ended up breaking down on a single track road called "unknown road" in the middle of the Brecon Beacons at 1AM. To be fair the RAC can't accept GPS co-ordinates either.

Things I'm indifferent about:
Their quarterly magazine which appears to be written by and for people who wear driving gloves.

Ologhai

Lum wrote: »

I use GEM. Like most recovery companies that aren't the AA or RAC they contract it out to local firms, in my case the local recovery firm is Dragon Rescue who the RAC used to use when they didn't have any vans anyway.

Things I like:
The card has both a freephone and a geographic landline number on it, so you can use your free minutes when calling from a mobile.
You get a free subscription to KeyGuard, which gives you a little fob to put on your keyring with instructions to the finder that gives them a £10 reward for returning your keys.

Things I dislike:
Their call centre aren't able to accept GPS co-ordinates so I ended up having to talk the call centre operator through going to google maps and following the route I'd driven when I ended up breaking down on a single track road called "unknown road" in the middle of the Brecon Beacons at 1AM. To be fair the RAC can't accept GPS co-ordinates either.

Thanks for the point of view! I'm with you on the usefulness of those landline numbers as part of your free minutes!

Have you generally found Gem's service to be more or less indistinguishable from, say, the AA?

Lum

Apart from the fact that your recovery will always be outsourced to a local firm and never to one of their own staff in the little yellow VW Transporter vans, they're pretty much identical.

Never been with the AA, but have been with the RAC, who I was happy with until I ran out of lives. Response times from GEM have been no better or worse than the RAC really, though you are at the mercy of the local contractor.

Ologhai

I decided to give GEM a try, and got a further £15 off by using TopCashBack.co.uk (bringing the total down to: £69.80).

The AA tried harder than I expected to keep our business: they offered a 40% discount on their original quote, bringing the price down from just under £200 to just under £120, 'to reward your loyalty as you've been with us for so long'...

What a shame they didn't value my loyalty so highly in their first renewal letter...

Anyway, the die is cast -- we'll just have to see if I go back to the AA with my tail between my legs in a year's time!

Sagaris

I broke down on the A12 a couple of years ago - phoned the GEM number on the card, the recovery vehicle was with us in 20 minutes. Very nice driver (still see him about sometimes and give him a wave!), got us home safely. We got the bill for the recovery, paid it ourselves and sent the receipt off to GEM - got the cheque back 48 hours later.

I've also been with the AA in the past and had no complaints about them either - other than the cost!