When NOT to get roadside recovery

Rolandtheroadie

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Their website advertising is very misleading if this is the case. That said, your insurers would normally foot the bill for this sort of recovery anyway.

Think thats it. They realised they could get their piece of the insurance claim pie.

lazer

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Indeed it is and paying forty pounds a year, to get towed off the motorway, that would normally cost anything up to two hundred pounds, is saving a great deal of money.

Only if it happens to you more than once every 4 years, which if you a newish well maintained car is unlikely.
Its akin to mobile phone insurance, laptop insurance etc, all a waste of money - much cheaper to self insure.
The money you are saving on monthly/annual premiums put into an emergency bank account and use if the need arises.

Flyboy152

lazer wrote: »

Only if it happens to you more than once every 4 years, which if you a newish well maintained car is unlikely.
Its akin to mobile phone insurance, laptop insurance etc, all a waste of money - much cheaper to self insure.
The money you are saving on monthly/annual premiums put into an emergency bank account and use if the need arises.

Generally speaking new cars get roadside assistance with their new car warranties. Sometimes only for the first year though.

gilbert_and_sullivan

If i owned a well maintained Landcruiser Amazon i wouldn't bother with cover.

nicolax

also if you have a clubcard you can use the vouchers through the rewards scheme for rac cover of varying levels

datostar

lazer wrote: »

this is a money saving website - how about people thinking through their logic.
Roadside recovery costs £150 (as per previous post, so supposedly this makes £40 a year breakdown assistance good value?
Really - do you actually use breakdown assistance more than once every 4 years?

As long as you have some savings - i wouldn't bother with breakdown recovery.

I think it depends on your vehicle usage. We once had a problem with a motorhome in France - rear wheel bearing and seal collapsed, oil on the brakes on that side and diff empty. Local garage said it would take 3 days to get parts from Paris. Fortunately I'd taken out recovery cover with the Caravan Club. We broke down near Cherbourg and were booked on the Boulogne-Folkestone ferry the following day. Service was magnificent. Taxi for the 4 of us to Boulogne (Monsieur specially got out his white Mercedes wedding car for us - best job he'd ever had!). Motorhome brought to the port next morning. Port towed it on to the boat and a transporter was waiting for us at Folkestone. They even sorted out the customs declaration as there's some kind of complication with unaccompanied vehicles and contents not travelling under their own steam. Faultless and it must have cost a fortune.

datostar

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Generally speaking new cars get roadside assistance with their new car warranties. Sometimes only for the first year though.

I just bought a 10 month old Renault and get the remainder of the 3 year warranty plus AA Renault Assistance full cover for the 3 years BUT it only covers warranty items, so you would have to pay for tyre changes and other things going wrong My last car was also a Renault, bought new 14 years ago. That came with full unrestricted RAC cover for 3 years so the current scheme gives less.

mikey72

datostar wrote: »

I just bought a 10 month old Renault and get the remainder of the 3 year warranty plus AA Renault Assistance full cover for the 3 years BUT it only covers warranty items, so you would have to pay for tyre changes and other things going wrong My last car was also a Renault, bought new 14 years ago. That came with full unrestricted RAC cover for 3 years so the current scheme gives less.

That is practically useless. My Vauxhall came with full AA cover, but that was a few years ago too.

catflea

jase1 wrote: »

The sort of thing that happens without warning, can happen to any car and stops you in your tracks (can't drive in heavy rain with no wipers!!). A silly little fault that cost £30 to fix.

Outpost wrote: »

Yes you can! Have some bottle!

Lum wrote: »

Happened to me years ago while me and a mate were off for an exam, and already slightly late.

I tied a bit of string to each wiper blade, brought the string in through each window and we just took turns alternately pulling on the string to operate the wipers so that we could finish the journey.

Left it with a backstreet garage at lunchtime and they charged me a fiver to pop the linkage back on.

Funny, I had my wipers pack up on the M3 a fortnight ago. No option but to carry on to the next junction and then about 1/2 mile to find somewhere safe to stop! (happened to be a sainsburys) stripped and re-built the wiper motor in the car park!

I wouldn't drive without breakdown cover, I have tools which I am able to use, I normally have basic parts in the back but things do go wrong that simply cant be fixed on a dark, wet, windy night. I've bust a linkage in the clutch and had a spark plug "spat out" recently. Both simple fixes, but not ones I was prepared for - one was recovery, one was roadside fix with the parts. My breakdown cover has well and truly paid for itself.

davidlizard

I am with Autoaid which is a pay and claim recovery service. We have called them out twice - once to a motorway service station approx 80 miles from home, and the other time to a residential address around 50 miles from home.

The fees for spending around 1 hour attempting a repair followed by a recovery to my house of driver+3 passengers was approx £160 and £130 respectively.

So therefore if Autoaid is just under £40/year, and the average recovery costs £150, then if you expect to use them less than once every 4 years roughly then you will break even. Thats assuming what we got charged is not some special deal because Autoaid called them out.

I would guess you have to think about how much the maximum cost of recovery is likely to be, and whether you are prepared to underwrite that yourself.

At the end of the day, companies like Autoaid must make a profit otherwise they would not be in business, and they would expect to collect more in fees than they spend on recovery claims.

Some cheaper policies will take the car to the nearest garage for repair - I am sceptical about these, as I would rather choose who repairs my car - with cost being a primary driver - these's no telling how much a random garage will charge, and to what standard the work is carried out to. Not to mention charges for storage and whatever else the less scrupulous ones will charge.