Green Flag experience - anyone use them?

LincolnshireYokel

You get good an bad experiences with anything from hotels the televisions. Nothing is 100% good or 100% poor.

My friens was with green flag a few years ago, they broke down in the middle of nowhere (timing belt broken), the local garage turned up and spent most of the time trying to persuade her to sell him the car for £100, although my mate (her hubby) could easily fix it.

Hezzawithkids

I was with them last year and had to call them out twice, both times they got me moving again and were polite and courteous. The second time was at 1am and they took longer than the estimated 40 mins to get to me and didn't get to me for an hour. You get emailed a questionnaire every time you use them and in the 2nd one when I answered that they took longer than promised I was offered a £10 rebate which arrived within a couple of weeks.

I'm only not with them now because I recently bought a new car with a year's AA Breakdown cover included, but when it comes to renewing they will be top of my list.

TrickyWicky

Used greenflag yes but despite them getting me out of a scrape or two I was rather concerned when one of their contractors damaged our car - literally towing it onto the recovery vehicle via a car part that wasn't designed for the job. Needless to say it snapped.

GF got the contractor to sort it but I still wasn't happy with the repair (bumper came back badly fitted etc). As someone else pointed out you'll never get 100% service so you have to allow for mistakes its just how they handle them after that counts. I sorted all that out myself and am now with ASDA breakdown - far cheaper too. Used once, no increase in premium, 2 of us on it, any car, any location: £5 per month! We couldn't find it anywhere else as cheap that offered us so much.

Johnmcl7

How are you getting it so cheap with Asda? I tried a quote but it's around £80 for one car and another £40 for the second for their higher service (which recovers the cars to anywhere)

John

DCFC79

The_Black_Sheep wrote: »

Well unlike the AA and RAC Green Flag doesn't have its own fleet of vehicles and instead uses local contractors - you'll get a local garage coming out to you if you break down not a Green Flag van.

Same with Britannia rescue then, they use local garages and experience ive had has been good.

sillygoose

Had a good experience with Greenflag for 3 years. Only thing is never renew, they send your renewal offer through with an alleged 'no claims discount' but if you run a new quote the new quote is cheaper than the 'discounted' renewal!

Considering you can get £25 cashback as well (I use Topcashback, takes a while but always comes through) its good value to not renew and take a fresh policy each year.

shedhead55

Been with green flag a couple of years but never had to use them (touch wood). As a Caravan Club member I know that their mayday service is ran by green flag and I doubt they would use a sub-standard provider, but for me the green flag direct option gives all I need at a lower price than CC mayday.
Several years ago I had to call the RAC out and a local garage rather than an RAC patrol attended so they too, at least in the past, have used contractors and then there was the widely reported scandal where RAC patrols were revealed to be receiving commission for selling stranded motorists replacement batteries at inflated prices which proved being number 2 didn't mean a thing in terms of ethics.

Interestingly, both green flag and my car insurance company are part of RBS and yet the quote from my insurers for breakdown cover was considerably more expensive that my existing green flag policy.

TrickyWicky

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

How are you getting it so cheap with Asda? I tried a quote but it's around £80 for one car and another £40 for the second for their higher service (which recovers the cars to anywhere)

John

I kinda cheated

I let the missus do the bargain hunting when it came to renewal time. If there is a bargain to be had she'll find it

Personally I have no idea how on earth she wangled it

eschaton

I would recommend Green Flag.

I have always been covered by AA/RAC over the years, mostly manufacturer cover.

I took out a Green Flag policy at the end of March via Direct Line, it was Recovery Plus, cost about £57.

In 19 years of driving I have never had the need to call upon a breakdown company apart from once 18 years ago after an accident.

I called out Green Flag about 2 months ago when my car developed a fault late on a Sunday afternoon. 50 minutes after making the call, my car had been recovered to my driveway 8/9 miles away, the service was excellent.

The car was took home as the local Peugeot dealer would have been closed. I was told to phone back the next day and they would tow it to the local dealer 3 miles away from my home.

I called up the next day to arrange this. I didn't want to use the local dealer as they are useless so I asked them to take the car to where I bought it 25 miles away instead - not a problem. I wanted the car took at a certain time as I wanted it to be at the dealer at around 3pm. I was able to have 1 hour window so I took 2pm-3pm and he turned up at 2:10pm.

I will certainly renew with GF next year. The iPhone app is great as well. It gives you your exact location which is useful if you are somewhere unfamiliar and press a button and that's you put straight through.

john_white

I used them a couple of years ago. Wouldn't use them again.

Car wouldn't start. They turned up with a low loader. Opened up the bonnet sprayed 'easy start' in to the supercharger! Then sprayed it in from the air filter. From cold took the car to 6500rpm and held it there for a minute. A lot of smoke! Then couldn't couldn't reconnect the supercharger hose. Engine lights appeared. Dropped the O ring, reveresed car over lawn to retrive O ring.

Left with the car being able to start, but in limp home mode with the supercharger hose not connected. Said it would be fine to drive it local garage and it appeared to be an ignition issue. Took 2 hours from the time arrived to time left.

Took it to a specialist, who said, easy start was a no no, shouldn't have been driven, and the only problem was the battery showed a dead cell when they checked it, total time to check battery, replace supercharger hose and rest EML, about 5 mins and only charged me for the battery. Green flag guy didn't even check the battery.

So in summary, took 2 hours to make the car worse, damaged the garden, and potentially cost me more money by needing to get the EML reset.

Now of course I was clearly unlucky yo have a useless mechanic who was also a pleb, but, for the sake of £30 more each year I go with AA or RAC if only not to get the same guy as the local specialist is no longer local!