Breakdown cover: Get the cheapest roadside recovery

judderman62

hollie.weimeraner wrote:

The bill was actually £49 due to it being Sunday but I received the invoice on Wednesday, sent the copy and claim form on Thursday and had a cheque for £45 on Monday. :beer:

Excellent service.

So limitations and they short change you - oh yes great service indeed - so you don't actually get reimbursed in full after all

judderman62

Guest_Room wrote:

it also includes faults like run out of petrol, wheel change and flat battery which will always be fixed, regardles of who attends.

Not correct sir. I did quite a bit of shopping around before I went with Green Flag this time round and I found that atleast two suppliers DID NOT offer wheel changes.

The rest of your post I agree 100% with.

I may well go back to the AA next time, dependant on cost, as their service is stunningly good.

judderman62

lisyloo wrote:

I haven't used them personally but I have seen many, many happy customers on these boards.

but I often wonder if this is because of the nature of what this board is about - are people more concerned with Cheapness than value for money ? - These are two very different things - just wondering like.

judderman62

[QUOTE=rawy
Also with autoaid you can call your own recovery company out, you don't have to use one of theirs. I use a local comapny I have known for years, they have never let me down. You don't get a choice with teh AA they'll send you any patrol or any garage working for the AA.

Rawy[/QUOTE]

I have had to use the AA 3 times in my time driving - every time it was an AA patrol , every time it arrived in 20 minutes or less, every time they've sorted me out.

Optimist

Does the AA still go that extra mile?

New rivals are undercutting the former king by as much as £70 and may offer a better service. Miles Brignall and Patrick Collinson report

Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian

Is the AA on the skids? Guardian Money can today reveal how cost-cutting measures are hurting customer service while a price survey shows how the AA has become uncompetitive compared with new entrants to the industry.
A fully comprehensive home start and roadside assistance policy costs £100.50 at the AA - and even more at the RAC - but switch to AutoAid and you can slash costs to just £32 for almost identical (or even better) cover.

Perhaps more worrying are tales of customer service at the AA. Take this example: you slide off the road in wet conditions, your car is completely undamaged, but thick mud means you can't reverse it back on to the road. Would you expect your AA membership to come to your aid?

Most of the company's 15m members probably would - but they are deluding themselves, according to one long-standing member of its recovery staff. He told us that staff are being squeezed so hard that they are not allowed to help customers in the way they did in the past.

Roadside waiting times, he claims, are now regularly more than an hour and a half. Staff shortages mean cars that would have been fixed on the roadside in the past are now routinely towed to the nearest garage because, he claims, "it's a quicker way to get rid of the job". The old culture of going the extra mile has "completely gone out the window", he says.

The AA strongly refutes these claims. It says call-out times are 40 minutes on average and that "80% of all cars are fixed at the roadside".

It would be easy to dismiss the claims as the mutterings of one disgruntled employee. But the GMB union, which represents many AA recovery staff, has long complained about them being put under intolerable pressure following staff cutbacks. It says morale among workers is "at an all-time low".

It also claims that in December, the number of patrol staff stood at 2,327 - down from a previous 3,500 but up from a low point of 2,087.

The AA maintains the figure is "around 3,000" but declined to give an exact figure. Since 2002, the number of members has risen from 13m to more than 15m.

Much of the GMB's case against the AA centres around working conditions for its employees. But the AA patrol man we spoke to says it now affects customers too.

"As recently as a decade ago, the AA was still the undisputed king of the roadside recovery industry and its members proclaimed its excellence.

"The decline started when it ceased to be a membership club. Centrica bought the company and started selling off everything that wasn't nailed down," says our AA agent, who has asked not to be named. "The real damage to service levels have come under the latest owners - private equity firms Permira and CVC."

His views chime with anecdotal reports reaching Guardian Money. Some users have complained of long waits to get though by phone. Others who have been members for more than 10 years have been told they are not covered when they try to claim following a minor accident.

Some have complained that when they renew their membership, they are being asked to pay £25 more than the fee charged to new members. Others have been shocked to find that they are paying AA membership fees years after they thought they had left the organisation, because it takes money under a "continuous payment authority".

A spokeswoman for the AA denied there had been a loss of customer service. "In terms of claims following accidents - we have never recovered vehicles following an accident. If a member slides off the road we would regard that as an accident. While we would always try and help them, it may not be practical as we could damage the car. All our internal investigations find very high levels of customer satisfaction among the 10,000 breakdowns we attend each day."

If you want to shop around for breakdown cover, there's a rough guide at moneysupermarket.com. But check policy details before buying.

AutoAid is a "pay and reclaim" service where drivers have to pay the recovery operator on the spot and then write to AutoAid for a refund. Early evidence suggests it works well.

FirstCall's £42.50 service excludes "human error" problems such as locking keys in the car. The RAC's website says its £119.70 fee includes "an online discount". But when we rang its call centre we were offered the same cover for £110.

http://money.guardian.co.uk/cars/story/0,,2025254,00.html#article_continue

Optimist

Sam2007 wrote:

Yes I do which is why I get so infuriated when people compare cheap £32 cover from Autoaid with the likes of AA/RAC. Its cheap for a reason, like I said before, you wouldn't compare Tesco value with their finest range would you? Sure the value range does what it says on the tin, but if you want that little bit more you pay the extra and buy the better stuff.

I have no problems with your comments but it would be honest if you had declared the fact you have a vested interest in people staying with the expensive large organisations in the first instance

I would compare Tesco with Aldi and Aldi would win 90% of the time !

judderman62

Sound's like utter bo**ocks to me.

I was with the AA until a couple of months ago (oh and no I don't work for them) and I had to use them late last year.

I dialled the number, finished dialling and a human voice answered straight away, the patrol arrived in 17 minutes !!!! and i received a text message about 4 mins before it arrived advising it would arrive in 8 minutes.

My actual , personal experience of them has been outstanding.

I do hate the fact they take your money automatically though and that is why I left them (seems many others are also doing this now though :eek: :eek: )

Optimist wrote:

Does the AA still go that extra mile?

New rivals are undercutting the former king by as much as £70 and may offer a better service. Miles Brignall and Patrick Collinson report

Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian

Is the AA on the skids? Guardian Money can today reveal how cost-cutting measures are hurting customer service while a price survey shows how the AA has become uncompetitive compared with new entrants to the industry.
A fully comprehensive home start and roadside assistance policy costs £100.50 at the AA - and even more at the RAC - but switch to AutoAid and you can slash costs to just £32 for almost identical (or even better) cover.

Perhaps more worrying are tales of customer service at the AA. Take this example: you slide off the road in wet conditions, your car is completely undamaged, but thick mud means you can't reverse it back on to the road. Would you expect your AA membership to come to your aid?

Most of the company's 15m members probably would - but they are deluding themselves, according to one long-standing member of its recovery staff. He told us that staff are being squeezed so hard that they are not allowed to help customers in the way they did in the past.

Roadside waiting times, he claims, are now regularly more than an hour and a half. Staff shortages mean cars that would have been fixed on the roadside in the past are now routinely towed to the nearest garage because, he claims, "it's a quicker way to get rid of the job". The old culture of going the extra mile has "completely gone out the window", he says.

The AA strongly refutes these claims. It says call-out times are 40 minutes on average and that "80% of all cars are fixed at the roadside".

It would be easy to dismiss the claims as the mutterings of one disgruntled employee. But the GMB union, which represents many AA recovery staff, has long complained about them being put under intolerable pressure following staff cutbacks. It says morale among workers is "at an all-time low".

It also claims that in December, the number of patrol staff stood at 2,327 - down from a previous 3,500 but up from a low point of 2,087.

The AA maintains the figure is "around 3,000" but declined to give an exact figure. Since 2002, the number of members has risen from 13m to more than 15m.

Much of the GMB's case against the AA centres around working conditions for its employees. But the AA patrol man we spoke to says it now affects customers too.

"As recently as a decade ago, the AA was still the undisputed king of the roadside recovery industry and its members proclaimed its excellence.

"The decline started when it ceased to be a membership club. Centrica bought the company and started selling off everything that wasn't nailed down," says our AA agent, who has asked not to be named. "The real damage to service levels have come under the latest owners - private equity firms Permira and CVC."

His views chime with anecdotal reports reaching Guardian Money. Some users have complained of long waits to get though by phone. Others who have been members for more than 10 years have been told they are not covered when they try to claim following a minor accident.

Some have complained that when they renew their membership, they are being asked to pay £25 more than the fee charged to new members. Others have been shocked to find that they are paying AA membership fees years after they thought they had left the organisation, because it takes money under a "continuous payment authority".

A spokeswoman for the AA denied there had been a loss of customer service. "In terms of claims following accidents - we have never recovered vehicles following an accident. If a member slides off the road we would regard that as an accident. While we would always try and help them, it may not be practical as we could damage the car. All our internal investigations find very high levels of customer satisfaction among the 10,000 breakdowns we attend each day."

If you want to shop around for breakdown cover, there's a rough guide at moneysupermarket.com. But check policy details before buying.

AutoAid is a "pay and reclaim" service where drivers have to pay the recovery operator on the spot and then write to AutoAid for a refund. Early evidence suggests it works well.

FirstCall's £42.50 service excludes "human error" problems such as locking keys in the car. The RAC's website says its £119.70 fee includes "an online discount". But when we rang its call centre we were offered the same cover for £110.

http://money.guardian.co.uk/cars/story/0,,2025254,00.html#article_continue

Sam2007

Optimist wrote:

I have no problems with your comments but it would be honest if you had declared the fact you have a vested interest in people staying with the expensive large organisations in the first instance

I would compare Tesco with Aldi and Aldi would win 90% of the time !

But then Aldi isn't that much cheaper than Tesco :S which is why I used the example of value and finest ie value white bread vs finest bread, both bread arent they?

I don't have a vested interest at all, what people read on this board is going to make very little different in the big picture and Im an honest person, if I truely believed these cheap covers were good then I would say so!

As regards to that article in the Guardian, unfortunately I have heard some bad stories about the AA and by all accounts they are slipping I don't think the article was very fair though as it didn't highlight key exclusions in the cheap cover such as use of the words 'reasonable' and no cover in the event of an accident/driver error.

michaeljworthington

My AA cover needed renewing. The quote from the AA was £91 for Option 2 Recovery and Relay. I rang them up and they reduced the fee to £68 straight away no questions asked.

Optimist

Sam2007 wrote:

But then Aldi isn't that much cheaper than Tesco :S which is why I used the example of value and finest ie value white bread vs finest bread, both bread arent they?

I don't have a vested interest at all, what people read on this board is going to make very little different in the big picture and Im an honest person, if I truely believed these cheap covers were good then I would say so!

As regards to that article in the Guardian, unfortunately I have heard some bad stories about the AA and by all accounts they are slipping I don't think the article was very fair though as it didn't highlight key exclusions in the cheap cover such as use of the words 'reasonable' and no cover in the event of an accident/driver error.

I would beg to differ both on the Aldi, Tesco comparison and more importantly on your last paragraph about accident cover with the cheaper policy

The following from Autoaids Terms and conditions compared to the AA, RAC and Greenflag.

From AutoAid

Breakdown means a mechanical or electrical failure, accident, theft or vandalism, which renders the vehicle immobile

From AA

Assistance is not available following a breakdown or accident attended by the police or other emergency service, until the vehicle's removal is authorised. If the police insist on recovery by a third party, the cost must be met by you.
No recovery (including a local tow) is available following an accident;

From Rac

If you call us for assistance following an accident, fire, theft or act of vandalism or other incident covered by a policy of motor insurance, you will be liable to pay us for the costs of removal. See General Exclusionsí on page 20 for more details.

Greenflag

We can repair/recover your vehicle after a road traffic accident but you will be responsible for any costs involved. You may be
able to recover these from your motor insurer.

So RAC and Greenflag will recover after an accident but you pay, no different to Autoaid . The AA refuses to do so under any circumstances

The other plus point with Autoaid is they cover both the main driver and spouse so we have two cars covered for £32.

Sorry but you haven't persuaded me to change I will stick with Autoaid