Car Breakdown Discussion

MartinSavy

Breakdown cover must include business cover e.g. working at more than one office!
Apparently, this is a new rule for breakdown cover. If you work at more than one office and you only have one as your base office, then you need to have business cover. This has been the case for 'car insurance' for ages but now it applies to breakdown too and increases the price. I was renewing with RAC a couple of weeks ago when they asked if I was using it for business travel. I pointed out it was my family car being used to travel to a different office maybe once a month at most. They asked if I had any logos on my car etc and concluded I still needed business cover. It also meant I had to list the vehicles I was using instead of 'me' being covered. Madness. On the upside RAC reduced the price by 40%; I think they took pity on me having to use a business policy.

AlecE

MartinSavy said:

Breakdown cover must include business cover e.g. working at more than one office!
Apparently, this is a new rule for breakdown cover. If you work at more than one office and you only have one as your base office, then you need to have business cover. This has been the case for 'car insurance' for ages but now it applies to breakdown too and increases the price. I was renewing with RAC a couple of weeks ago when they asked if I was using it for business travel. I pointed out it was my family car being used to travel to a different office maybe once a month at most. They asked if I had any logos on my car etc and concluded I still needed business cover. It also meant I had to list the vehicles I was using instead of 'me' being covered. Madness. On the upside RAC reduced the price by 40%; I think they took pity on me having to use a business policy.

That sounds very weird. Business cover for breakdowns. I could understand it if it was a vehicle used for the business (eg transporting goods between sites, to customers, for visiting customers etc) but just for travelling to multiple offices? Wow. 

zoot1

Really torn this year.

The family have always been with autoaid and many hassle free call outs.

However, price increases and £25 call out for cars over 10yrs have made it expensive.

I was going to switch to Eversure but peoples reviews here are very poor 

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6223455/eversure-car-breakdown-discussion

Do I stick with what I know or alternate between Eversure and Autoaid each year to get the Topcashback refunds

Acecanman

I wonder how you come to the conclusion about Autoaid? Most of the positive comments on Trustpilot (as far as I have read) come from renewal experiences with very few about actual use of the breakdown service. There are quite a few comments about poor admin. , but maybe you have different data. Its fine to get a positive comment about how easy it was to pay/renew but the proof of the pudding... as they say.

ChineseMooncakes

I wanted to post how pleased I am that I looked on MSE about haggling with breakdown cover providers. My renewal quote from RAC was £25 but they reduced it to £16 as well as waiving my last payment this year due to my straitened circumstances. The customer service was fantastic and it actually brought a tear to my eye. I know there are some cheaper providers but my roadside experience with RAC has always been so good, I didn’t actually want to switch.

DeadTall

My renewal price for the AA was £391...    Went onto the online "I want to cancel" chat & it was instantly reduced to £173... which is less than last year and the year before  - where on earth do the AA get their prices from? We've always had really good service from them & they are a Which? recommended provider, but honestly their pricing just seem totally random.

Chordeiles

Green Flag just managed to lose this customer !

At renewal nearly a year ago I added European cover, as we took the car across Europe to Italy in September.  No problems except a throwaway comment by the representative "it's a good job your car isn't a year older" (it's a 2015 model) set me thinking.  But looking at their website told me they are happy to cover older cars in Europe.

Now at this year's renewal my premium increased from £184.80 to £249.76 (that includes personal cover so my wife and her car are covered too, though second car not in Europe, of course).

Called them, primarily to ensure auto-renewal didn't happen (they neatly avoided adding this facility to the app.), but also to haggle.  They were coy about telling me why the premium had increased that much, but offered £15 off for "loyalty" - this after I had already told them I could get an equivalent offer from Britannia for only £200, so they were determined not to try too hard to tempt me.

Interestingly, I did call them out about a month ago when my battery had died, and recharging didn't help (battery simply did not want to accept charge).  Response was very slow (nearly 4 hours), and information about when help would arrive was abysmal.  But when the guy arrived (in a GF branded van, to my surprise) he was great, equipped with impressive tools to check my electrics and even carried spare batteries (at a price that was not cheap, but not totally outrageous, either).

Now reading comments elsewhere on MSE I realise that this callout may have bumped up my renewal cost, previously I could only assume that it was because the car would celebrate its tenth birthday during the currency of the policy.  And Green Flag don't seem interested in explaining.

It's very likely that we'll have a new car by this time next year - with inclusive 2-year Europe-wide cover.  So this year's renewal(s) will be with StartRescue, I think, they are cheap enough (especially with MSE discount) that I'll shed few tears over wasting the remainder of the policy when the new car arrives.

Either that or Britannia, as their personal cover may still have use when the car cover is no longer needed.  This happened to us about 18 years ago when our new Mercedes Benz locked the keys in the boot "because no other door had been opened".  MB rescue told us the callout would be chargeable, as "that's the way it's meant to work" !!  Britannia sorted the issue (for free) under the remaining personal cover.

memberboatchange1

I wish I had found this earlier. As a loyalty reward for being a continuous member for over 40 years, the AA wished to charge me this year about 5 times what they would charge a new member, but new members can also get a 50% discount or cashback from several sites, making this an absolute insult to loyal renewing members. 

Fortunately, AA do send a renewal notice with the price on, so I discontinued the auto-renewal. I have found cover approx the same with AutoAid for less than 20% of the AA price - which makes it look like a rip off.

I see comments that most of the other companies (apart from AA/RAC and a very few others) do not have thier own 'Patrols' with dedicated vehicles and mechanics - but in the past 40 years we have had a couple of call-outs, and the responding vehicle and mechanic is NOT always an AA staff member, but sometimes has been an independent garage, probably related to our location at the time.  And I have found both the AA Patrols and the Independent folks just as helpful - in fact if I remember right they were all excellent. I could not be quite so effusive about all the main manufacturer dealerships we have used for regular service, as one (25 yr ago) caused a breakdown by not replacing a belt at required schedule, but our experience with our local independent mechanics has always been very good.

I thought if I cancelled the autorenewal, the AA would at least email or phone me to try to persuade me to renew and perhaps be able to haggle something a little less than their initial price, but they do not appear to have bothered at all, perhaps indicating their disdain for loyal 'members'. Yes, I know we ceased to be Members several years ago when the AA directors decided to sell out to a commercial company instead of having a proper Membership, and I think that is where everything started to go wrong. I just thought they might have enough interest to chase me to try to retain me as a customer, but apparently not even an email to warn me my 'membership' had lapsed and I needed to arrange cover!

TheGame21

Our renewal has come up and RAC want to charge £209. Didn't have the greatest experience in 2 call outs with them, one took over 3 hours and the other 5. We are looking to cut costs and I've been looking at Autoaid, what are people's experience's with them? However our vehicles are 14 years and 11 years old so I read there are extra call out costs even if you pay the old vehicle premium? Looked at Eversure but their reviews don't seem good. 

djh95

Posting here in the hope it will help some others - I had a renewal quote from AutoAid for around £63 but that didn't include the extra costs for a car over 15 years old, which mine will be come September. I got in touch and they said you have to pay the extra when taking out an annual policy - ie you can't add the older car cover nearer the time. So this would have increased the premium to around £85.

I did some researching and came across Start Rescue. They are a Which? recommended supplier and have excellent TrustPilot reviews. They also have a 25% discount until 10 January 2025. I paid £56 for the same cover as AutoAid. Hope this helps.