Car Breakdown Discussion

den169

pioneer31 wrote: »

I'm currently with the AA and now a Silver member! whoopee! The list of benefits doesn't seem to be anything I would want though.......like free homestart?

My cover is roadside - £55/yr. I really need homestart, as I have been caught out in the past and was virtually held to ransom!

Homestart is another £58, taking it to a total of £113......no thanks!

So I've gone on to a price comparison website and been offered similar from the following firms. Roadside plus Homestart all coming in at between £30 - £40.

Kwik Fit
Green
Rescue My Car
Swiftcover
AXA.

Does anyone know if any of those should REALLY be avoided?

I would check the small print to see if they take you to a local garage or home i think most will take you to a local gaerage,

pioneer31

I've since rung the AA and asked to leave, at which point they offered to sweeten the deal.

They've offered me Homestart for free (which is what I wanted), so I've decided to stay with them. I'll pay £57 instead of £115

It's still not the cheapest deal out there but we're only talking about £15 or so now...

Quentin

den169 wrote: »

This is what puts me off Swiftcover and most of the others.

I don't want taking to a local garage to be ripped off i want the car taken home.

In that case you need to take out "recovery" cover. You are currently looking at the basic breakdown cover.

den169

Quentin wrote: »

In that case you need to take out "recovery" cover. You are currently looking at the basic breakdown cover.

No i'm not looking at basic breakdown, i'm looking at recovery nearly all breakdown cover now includes wording in the policy notes similar to the swiftcover which states

We will pay:
 and arrange in the first instance for Your Car, an attached trailer, You and up
to 6 passengers to be taken to the nearest garage able to undertake the
repair.
 and arrange, if the above is not possible at the time or the repair cannot be
made within the same working day, for Your Car, an attached trailer, You and
up to 6 passengers to be taken to Your home or original destination.

Thats swiftcover recovery.
I actually went with AA for that reason,Check your policy notes and you'll find most say the same take to a local garage then if they can't fix it that day they'll take you home.All the cheap ones state this with very few exceptions such as Autoaid Gem AA.:j

shopbot

I've got a Tesco Breakdown Policy where the cover is provided by RAC.

If I join RAC directly via Quidco will I get the new customer cashback? Do you think that I will be viewed as an existing customer because they provide the cover for Tesco?

Thanks
SB

vrypleased

Cant believe Im saying this but feel miss-lead and let down with the guide to breakdown cover. First it is rapped in cashbacks IMPORTANT - Cashback is never guaranteed it states at the bottom so is miss-leading in the prices. Then to top it off it doesnt mention many other breakdown companies. Nor mentioning to make sure you go to the comparison sites. Just got full breakdown cover from axa for less than £40 by looking through the comparison sites. A habit Iv got into because of the advice from this site so why not this time? Sorry about the rant but had to say something.

Mr_Freeman

Hi, Long time subscriber , first time poster
Got AA for a year,with cash back deal, which was nice, got bundled with a free 1 year deal offer for boiler/pipe home emergency deal which I canceled after the year was up for Auto-renewal. However My AA silver membership was not canceled, I only noticed when I checked my credit card statement .
The funny thing is that the credit card details they had, had expired 2 months before renewal !
I assumed that they would have been unable to take any money from a card that had expired? When asked about this I was given a 20 second delayed response of, wait for it................... " we can request for updated details from your credit card supplier !!!!!!!!!!!!
Can this be true,? Can any company request this?, is this legal? can a credit card company act on your behalf and update your new credit cards expiry date at the request of a company.?
I felt the need to share this.
All the best to all you money savers.

den169

Mr_Freeman wrote: »

Hi, Long time subscriber , first time poster
Got AA for a year,with cash back deal, which was nice, got bundled with a free 1 year deal offer for boiler/pipe home emergency deal which I canceled after the year was up for Auto-renewal. However My AA silver membership was not canceled, I only noticed when I checked my credit card statement .
The funny thing is that the credit card details they had, had expired 2 months before renewal !
I assumed that they would have been unable to take any money from a card that had expired? When asked about this I was given a 20 second delayed response of, wait for it................... " we can request for updated details from your credit card supplier !!!!!!!!!!!!
Can this be true,? Can any company request this?, is this legal? can a credit card company act on your behalf and update your new credit cards expiry date at the request of a company.?
I felt the need to share this.
All the best to all you money savers.

Yes they can i had the same problem with Saga last year i rang to cancel the car insurance then rang a few days later to ask for a no claims proof,To be told they had already taken the money out and would have to refund it.However they couldn't refund it because the credit card was out of date took me weeks to sort it and finally had to accept a cheque off Saga and put it in the bank to cash.How the hell they can get away with stuff like this is beyond me.

The_AA_Company_Representative

Mr_Freeman wrote: »

Hi, Long time subscriber , first time poster
Got AA for a year,with cash back deal, which was nice, got bundled with a free 1 year deal offer for boiler/pipe home emergency deal which I canceled after the year was up for Auto-renewal. However My AA silver membership was not canceled, I only noticed when I checked my credit card statement .
The funny thing is that the credit card details they had, had expired 2 months before renewal !
I assumed that they would have been unable to take any money from a card that had expired? When asked about this I was given a 20 second delayed response of, wait for it................... " we can request for updated details from your credit card supplier !!!!!!!!!!!!
Can this be true,? Can any company request this?, is this legal? can a credit card company act on your behalf and update your new credit cards expiry date at the request of a company.?
I felt the need to share this.
All the best to all you money savers.

Hello Mr Freeman, we are concerned to hear of your dissappointment and would like to invite you to discuss this with us, if there is anything you would like us to clarify, please email [EMAIL="chat@theaa.com"]chat@theaa.com[/EMAIL] with your details and reference number FOR24062. Thank you, AA.

yestopinkdiamonds

My husband has been in charge of Breakdown Cover until 10 minutes ago when I stumbled upon MSE article on best deals and this forum!!

We've just got our renewal letter from AA. We have Roadside, Home Start and Relay (and hubby has zero idea why we have this much cover as our car is in fantastic condition, 2007 reg and only used at the weekends in the Greater London area).

The renewal price is £189!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We've had this cover for 5 years so now eligible for Gold cover, and having read through other posts I can now see we've been basically ripped off as hubby never really looked at the renewal letters.

so I'm going to do some price comparisons this evening but I am wondering, even if I just look at Roadside which is £65 per year on our letter, it still looks higher than anyone else.

What influences the price? Location? Car type? Or simply a case of being ripped off?