breakdown and national recovery with missing locking wheel nut key

amoyguang

Hello. I am an aa customer with breakdown and national  recovery cover. Could anyone help clarify whether aa is right to decline my policy?

Today I had a flat tyre and called aa. A rescuer came and can't put replacement wheel as we can't find locking wheel nut key. He told me aa is going to arrange for recovery.

About 1h later, another rescuer came and can't do the road assistantance and left, telling me he was not assigned the recovery job.

I called aa. The staff told me they can't help with recovery unless I pay 75 pound as the policy requires me to have locking wheel nut key ready. I am not aware of this at all and even write 'flat tyre no locking wheel nut key' when reporting the breakdown in aa app. And the first rescuer didn't mention this neither. I asked for speaking with the manager. Manager left a voice message making the same claim.

Then I called aa again, another customer service staff told me in her system, it shows my car is recovered in my home address. I even went out my house to check, NOTHING!

I am never told about this before and what's the point of buying national recovery insurance with no help when the car can't move. What do you think?

Ayr_Rage

It is entirely your responsibility to provide the locking nut, that'll be a condition of just about all policies.

You don't have to be told you need that nut to repair a wheel or tyre.

If you get it recovered to your home then what is your plan to get the wheel removed?

Sounds like an expensive lesson.

Altior

Obviously they can't change the wheel without the locking wheel nut key. Not at the side of the road. It can be a horrible job, even for the experts.

Have you lost the key, or did you never have one?

A similar thing happened to me, but it was one of my first cars, schoolboy error but I had only recently purchased the vehicle from a dealer (decades ago). The dealer had to recover the vehicle to their own premises and find a way to get the wheel off. I think on my model, back then there was only a handful of different keys and the pattern was linked to the VIN, so he was able to get a new key from the manufacturer.

MyRealNameToo

Last time I checked RAC was fractionally better recovering you up to 10 miles if you cannot produce the key

The only providers that dont have such a clause tends to be the own brand recovery services from premium brands and thats mainly because they are only dealing with a single brand so can bring the relevant master keys plus you are paying a premium price for the branding so they can be more flexible