Recovery truck waiting time unreasonable?

m0t

Earlier today I had a tyre blowout on the m25, no warning at all and the tyre was only a couple of years old with loads of tread left.

I had my wife and 11 month old in the car and it was cold and raining heavily. I managed to get on to the hard shoulder (thank goodness it wasn't a smart motorway).

I called the RAC and was told that we needed to get out of the vehicle and wait behind the barrier as it was unsafe to stay in the car. I was told someone would be with us in 30 minutes. 

Wrapped the baby up as best we could and put him in his pram with waterproof covering. Neither one of us had the right sort of coats for a heavy rain shower and within about 20 minutes were soaked through and our baby was getting very cold.

I had a couple of calls from the breakdown people but they weren't able to tell me where the recovery truck was or how long they'd be. They also kept calling me from numbers that wouldn't accept incoming calls so I couldn't ever speak to the person that was supposed to be arranging it.

After an hour I had a call telling me it would be 4 hours. I managed to escalate it to someone who took pity on our baby and arranged for someone to arrive within 30 minutes.

15 minutes later the driver called me to say he was just down the road. In the course of that call it turned out that they hadn't told him there were three of us and he couldn't take us. They then told us it would be at least another hour, in the cold and wet.

In the end we were waiting for two and a half hours. If it had just been me I'd have been OK with it, but not with a young baby who was really struggling by the end.

So two questions - was that a normal wait time and is there another company who would have been faster?

Sandtree

m0t said:

So two questions - was that a normal wait time and is there another company who would have been faster?

Average waiting time will vary vastly, most claim its about 1 hour but there are plenty of stories of people having 6+ hour waits too... it ultimately depends on what priority is applied to your case, how many other breakdowns there are in the area and their relative priority etc.

Being a young-middle age male most times I've called someone out its been a couple of hours but only once was it in any way a risky situation and to be honest in that case I ignored the advice to wait behind the barrier because it was snowing heavily and I didn't have appropriate clothing (though did sit in the passenger side of the vehicle).

As to any other company? Its significantly the luck of the draw, Greenflag may have had a quiet day and got there quicker or the AA may have been swamped with single pregnant females and so taken an extra hour (or it could have been the other way around) 

daveyjp

On a motorway dial 999 or use the emergency phones, that will get police or highway officer response.

Don't call your breakdown service.

Ibrahim5

I recently lost a wheel in a pothole. We stopped in a layby of people who had all hit the same pothole. They were phoning the council and police but no-one would attend to pothole. Anyway the people in front of us had an estimated 3 hour wait. Being a DIY mechanic I had the spare wheel on in seconds and we were off on our way. After your car has been in a garage it's always worth retorquing the wheel nuts so you know you can get them off in an emergency. There are more advantages to DIY than just saving money.

cymruchris

I had a brand new Continental tyre blow that was 2 weeks old a couple of weeks ago with less than a 1000 miles on it (Thanks to a pothole). The wheel nuts had been over-torqued - so me jumping on a wheel wrench couldn't shift them. My location was Charing Cross Station in Central London - and had a breakdown truck with cordless air gun arrive in 40 minutes at 11pm on a Tuesday night. That's with a (non-RAC) policy that cost me £25 for the year. I didn't have any priority status - it was just me in the car. I did however have a waterproof reflective jacket in the spare wheel well for such an occasion, along with a fully charged emergency light, and a couple of hand warmers.

It appears you did wait over the odds - but it would depend on how many call-outs were being dealt with at that moment. As a learning point, you should always be prepared for a bad weather emergency when out in the car - even if it's a light waterproof jacket that's rolled up into the spare wheel for both of you, and some 'emergency hand warmers' that are activated by pressing the little metal disc. 

DB1904

daveyjp said:

On a motorway dial 999 or use the emergency phones, that will get police or highway officer response.

Don't call your breakdown service.

OP do you carry a spare? 

Either way call Highways England, they'll either give you some cover to change the tyre of have you removed within 30 minutes. 

[Deleted User]

There is no guaranteed service level agreement for any of the breakdown services and I'm sure they got to you as soon as they possibly could. Circumstances weren't great with the weather and baby but at least you were safe and got home. 

Being prepared for the unexpected is a dying art nowadays but taking a baby out of the house should always involve carrying everything needed for the weather conditions - there are a multitude of reasons why you might be outdoors for longer than expected and a broken down car is just one of them. 

Its going back 20 years now since my sprogs were babies but we managed hours out and about in all weathers without any problems keeping warm and dry with the right clothes. So much so that my kids now say winter is their favourite season and love going out in the rain.

I recently needed recovering from the hard shoulder by the RAC, had to wait 2 hours behind the barrier from phone call to finally getting in the RAC van on an icy cold windy morning in the dark but was still thankful and appreciative to the RAC man, especially given the work he had to do on the hard shoulder to load my car up for towing with lorries whizzing past just a few feet away from him.

Ibrahim5

It's interesting how things have deteriorated. I always have cover but have only called once in the last 25 years. When I started driving I had old, unreliable cars. The lack of a "lights left on warning buzzer" also embarrassingly led to a good few callouts. I was normally covered by National Breakdown who changed to "Green Flag". They always gave you money, I think it was £10 if they took over an hour. I was always quite excited that I might get a reward but they normally arrived after about 50 minutes. It seemed a bit wrong that you never had a chance to win if you never called them out. Why are people now waiting for hours when it was always under an hour many years ago?

VFR

To me that is appalling service & will take note of what Davey said.

m0t

DB1904 said:

daveyjp said:

On a motorway dial 999 or use the emergency phones, that will get police or highway officer response.

Don't call your breakdown service.

OP do you carry a spare? 

Either way call Highways England, they'll either give you some cover to change the tyre of have you removed within 30 minutes. 

My car didn’t come with a spare, only a can of that goo stuff. 

I don’t know if using that would have helped, the tyre that went was on the drivers side next to the slow lane so I didn’t get a good look at what had happened to it.

I didn’t realise that we could get removed by Highways England. I called RAC first and the lady on the phone said they’d sort everything out with them. 

We should have had stuff for the baby with us. In twenty years of driving I’ve never had to use a hard shoulder so we were caught unprepared. I’ve bought some stuff to keep in the boot now. 

Money_Grabber13579

If Highways England remove you from the carriageway, do you not have to pay for that? If so, I suspect that is why people are reluctant to do that because there is then an element of paying twice for the same service (although the breakdown service will still have to come out to rescue you from whatever safe location Highways England deposit you at).