Following from my REALLY Annoyed thread

C

camerassassin

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I now need some advice re emergency breakdown stuff

RAC v AA v ???

I'm 82 , my car is my lifeline as it keeps me mobile - without it I'm tied to the house :( Though I now have the details of a very very nice Recovery man I can't call him out if I need a tyre/wheel change because of a flat ! The Garage that does my Service/MOT is not far away [ about 5 miles ] but it's a small business and I can't expect them to drop everything and come over to the Motorway if I'm out and about.

Sooooo - since the RAC Life Membership is no longer available I do need some form of Roadside Assistance !

Any suggestions/advice ?
 
What is wrong with the RAC - I use Tesco vouchers for ours, just for peace of mind.

Tyre changes are very rare so getting the basic cover is probably fine.
 
What's wrong with the RAC ? Well after my experience this week - I would say the lack of communication skills is a BIG problem. And how do Tesco vouchers help ?
 
Green flag is literally half price for the "full works" (home start etc) of either AA or RAC.
It cost me £96 last renewal, that was up a tenner on the last couple of years.
 
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I've just quit the AA and am moving over to Green Flag.
 
camerassassin said:
What's wrong with the RAC ? Well after my experience this week - I would say the lack of communication skills is a BIG problem. And how do Tesco vouchers help ?
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In what way? What was the issue?

Only used them rarely but when I have I didnt have a problem. Also like every service there is good and bad experiences. I am on a Ryanair group and at least half the complaints are down to the person not the company. I have flown twice this year and all fine but if I was to listen to the posters I would never fly with them!
 
cambsno said:
In what way? What was the issue?

Only used them rarely but when I have I didnt have a problem. Also like every service there is good and bad experiences. I am on a Ryanair group and at least half the complaints are down to the person not the company. I have flown twice this year and all fine but if I was to listen to the posters I would never fly with them!
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Clearly you didn't read what I had posted yesterday https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/what-really-annoyed-me-yesterday.739971/
 
cambsno said:
In what way? What was the issue?

Only used them rarely but when I have I didnt have a problem. Also like every service there is good and bad experiences. I am on a Ryanair group and at least half the complaints are down to the person not the company. I have flown twice this year and all fine but if I was to listen to the posters I would never fly with them!
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And thats why I would use Green flag as a last resort as they are subcontractors for want of a better term rather than directly working for RAC or the AA

Not had any issue with the AA, and yes it can take some time for them to arrive but i have never had anything excessive and its got to be taken in contect, breaking down on a bankholiday weekend or in extreme weather is likely to take longer purly as there are likely to be more breakdowns
 
cambsno said:
In what way? What was the issue?

Only used them rarely but when I have I didnt have a problem. Also like every service there is good and bad experiences. I am on a Ryanair group and at least half the complaints are down to the person not the company. I have flown twice this year and all fine but if I was to listen to the posters I would never fly with them!
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To summarise.

In 1984 the OP and her late husband took out “Lifetime Membership” with the RAC. The last time the OP called out the RAC was about 25 years ago. Since then the OP has moved house several times, and the RAC have had several new owners. When the OP contacted the RAC for assistance a couple of days ago they told her that they did not have a record of her membership on their computer system, and so she would have to pay a call out fee. She refused to do this.


This raises a couple of questions:
Did the OP inform the RAC of her new postal address each time she moved house?
Are the RAC legally obliged to honour the “Lifetime Membership” when they were taken over by another company?
 
Green Flag. Their prices are often cheaper than the others and you can ask them to mark you as vulnerable so you will (in theory) be prioritised should you call them. My wife works for an insurance company so sees the complaints metrics which are low. She also gets Green Flag cover discounted and has used them a few times and each time has been flawless.
 
Talk to your insurers. They usually offload the work to RAC or AA, charge less because it's a bundled service and often provide a better level of cover. I once locked my keys in my car - the AA had a go but when it got hard tried to deny cover because their policies don't cover "self inflicted" claims. After a brief chat, I pointed out that the cover I had with them via my insurers did. They ended up providing a 250 mile taxi service so I could go home and get the spare keys and return the next day to open the vehicle.
 
JonathanRyan said:
I once locked my keys in my car - the AA had a go but when it got hard
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You should have found a young teenager with his baseball cap on backwards.
He'd have done it in less than a minute ;)
 
Cobra said:
You should have found a young teenager with his baseball cap on backwards.
He'd have done it in less than a minute ;)
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As it happened, I had both RAC and AA cover at the time. An RAC locksmith spent a couple of hours trying to get in. Apparently, Honda had changed their security weeks before my car was made - on the older version you could short the battery and it would unlock everything.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Talk to your insurers. They usually offload the work to RAC or AA, charge less because it's a bundled service and often provide a better level of cover. I once locked my keys in my car - the AA had a go but when it got hard tried to deny cover because their policies don't cover "self inflicted" claims. After a brief chat, I pointed out that the cover I had with them via my insurers did. They ended up providing a 250 mile taxi service so I could go home and get the spare keys and return the next day to open the vehicle.
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These days its much easier - my Kia has an app and one of the functions is to lock or unlock car with phone, even if miles away! Useful for when I walk 20 mins and cant remember if I locked it!
 
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