AutoAid Car Breakdown Discussion

athonjon

Hi. Does anyone know of any current discount codes for Autoaid? Thanks

cadguy77

Had to use service due to blown tyre on M3. I'm a 40something male and was travelling alone on way home from work on a dark wet evening.

I had to wait for 3.5 hours for a recovery vehicle to get to me.

The service from the call center was fantastic, with regular calls to check up on me. No communication from recovery company until final moments

To compensate for my lengthy wait, Autoaid gave me £20 which is 46% of the annual premium.

So all in, 3/5 stars from me.

Mamoth

I tried to join autoaid via the web site,advertised price £48pounds but when you get to the check out it's jumped to £59.99.
Anyone else?

JGB1955

Did you go for the vehicle based breakdown policy rather than the Personal Breakdown cover?

Morph4610

There's a price increase this month which Martin has already mentioned. Pretty annoying. I've been with them a few years and my renewal is coming up. Could still be a good deal with the cover you get (especially the free spouse bit) but well worth shopping around

tonylander48

Hi all. Just a word of warning regarding AutoAid breakdown cover. I needed to cancel within 24hrs of taking out a policy and found that you are not given a cooling off period and charged £35 to cancel. All AutoAid say is that it is that this is in the Ts and Cs.

Simon678

My experience:

I was quoted £48.31 to sign up. Paid online and £59.99 was taken from my account! Received confirmation email stating that I had paid for a £54.99 premium...

Rung them up to complain (prompt answering - good) and was told that the £48.31 price was based on signing up before 14th of May and as my start date was beyond this I was charged the full £54.99. A "big orange box" would have come up to advise me of this. No such box appeared but it is my word against theirs.

I asked for a full refund and have been promised a refund of £39.99 in 3 to 5 days which is a full refund less £15 as per their T&Cs (which i obviously didn't read) and also the £5 service charge for setting up the account which is non-refundable (and explains the discrepancy between the £59.99 that was taken from my account and the £54.99 that my confirmation email said that I paid.

At least they didn't try to refund me £48.31 minus £20...I think they're missing a trick there :rotfl:

I never use their service in terms of breakdown so can't comment on that (and there are plenty of positive reviews for that) but the above reflects my actual experience in terms of signing up. I hold nothing against them - I shouldn't have been so stupid to trust MSE.com so blindly and sign up to a company I'd never heard of. Would have probably given them a bash but the wife needs the car far more than I do and she vetoed it so there we go.

Life lesson for £20...albeit one that I should've already known.

zagubov

I've had to call them out three or four times. They use local breakdown services who weren't alway fast enough with their paperwork to meet their pay-and-reclaim deadlines.

They later switched to a no payments on the road model and I didn't find any problems. They aren't very fast (if they say it'll be an hour they'll be at the very end of the hour) but I'm in London where breakdown services are never fast.

I'm happy with them and it would take a lot to get me to switch.

Kennny

First time using their service last night; after midnight, two punctures at once! My call was quickly answered, they offered to arrange recovery to home if tyres couldn't be sorted. Whilst I was still on the call, their local operator phoned! Arrived within half an hour with mobile tyre van, repaired one tyre and replaced the other. Professional, courteous, efficient – couldn't have asked for more.

Rustynuts

Worst experience ever from a Roadside Assistance company.

I've used a few roadside assistance options in the past and they've all been pretty useless, but in the main they've just failed to help really. Howewer, Autoaid went way beyond this. My wife locked the keys in the boot of her car in Liverpool, so we called Autoaid who said they would send someone out to help.

The Orangutan who turned up from Recovery North West then proceeded to use steel bars and other such tools to try and retrieve the key from the boot. Apparently "We do this every day" so despite being told not to damage the car he set about denting the roof, bending the door frame, damaging the rubber trim on the door and window, and removing paint from as many different areas of the surrounding bodywork as he could manage. About half an hour later he'd finished butchering the exterior of the car, and had moved on to the interior trim with his shiny metal tools. So now there was damage to the seat levers and hatch cover. Finally he managed to retrieve the key and then started mangling the bent door back into shape. Then demanded a signature from my distraught wife (which later transpired was a disclaimer for any damage caused which should've been presented and signed PRIOR to any work taking place) and left.

Total cost to put our new car back into the state it was before he started was a little over £2000.

To add insult to injury, the signature was accepted by Autoaids insurance company that we were happy with the damage caused and had signed as such, so "Jog On!"

So, beware of using this company who send hooligans to do a half arsed job which a professional would do in much less time with far less consequenses. In fact, if I hadn't ever paid £40 for Autoaids policy and had simply smashed the rear window to get the key it would've cost me £20 more than it did, and I'd have had a new window put in for £60.

You Have Been Warned!

Finally my years subscription has expired and I can now look for a proper roadside assistance policy which might actually help when I need assistance (instead of butchering my £15000 car).