Get yourself breakdown cover

[Sharky]

The best service ever, I got from the AA.

In the 90's, before mobile phones, my clutch went on my Peugeot. Discovered later, that it was a rod from the pedal to the slave cylinder that had broken.

Anyway, I was able to continue driving, by crashing the gears without the clutch, but realised that I wouldn't make it all the way home. So managed to keep going as far as the next pub, where I thought I would be able to borrow a phone and call the AA.

So, with my AA card in my hand, approached the pub door, but it was in the days of restricted open times, so was closed.

So unable to contact the AA, I walked back to the car. Just at that moment, an AA patrol van was about to drive past. With my AA card still in my hand, I flagged him down and gratefully, he stopped and sorted me out!

My lucky day.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

Just had renewal for AA
4 drivers & 'personal cover' (any vehicle, be covered person the driver or passenger)
A high renewal, so SWMBO rang up & got it to £189.05!!!
(the scribbled out figure was a RAC quote, to help give them an incentive to match/beat it)

 

[Electric_Andy]

An update: All 3 of them got a taxi and made it to the pass-out parade in time. They got a lift back to the car (from Winchester to Stonehenge). The engineer is with them now and reckons it was a seized slider pin on the brakes, hope they can fix it there but if not will have to wait for recovery back to Plymouth. I'm a bit annoyed as it only had new brakes 6 months ago so presumably pins weren't re-greased as they should have been. BTW I pay £46/year for the 3 star cover which is UK only, home start, onward journey and recovery home. No windscreen or mis-fuelling I don't think.

Another update: We got a call this morning from Start Rescue, my partner explained the mix-up (had to wait an hour at Ilminster) but apart from that said the service was excellent. They even gave us £15 compensation for the wait (which would have paid for coffee and a burger), and the staff who handled the call that day have all had re-training, as they had my partner on hold for 25 minutes with no reassurance that they were dealing with the call. So very impressed compared to 4,5,6 hour waits I've heard other people having

 

[Badger_Boom]

We've been with the RAC for 25 years or so. Originally we joined with a cheap deal through the Morris Minor Owners Club.

We occasionally have to go through the alternative quote dance when they try to hike the renewal price, but overall they've been pretty good. We seem to go for long periods without using them but we've had to make two call outs in the last couple of months (the perils of older cars).

First was when my partner's 20 year old VW lost electrical power on the M1 at 9pm because the alternator had packed up. It took a couple of hours for them to turn up, but she had managed to cruise off into some services so she wasn't alone at the roadside. They diagnosed the problem and then delivered the car (and her) to our local specialist where I picked her up.

The second was when my Discovery popped an inlet manifold. They arrived promptly and correctly diagnosed the problem. The only drama was recovery which took nearly 8 hours. It needed a sufficiently large truck, and all their capacity was dealing with vans and other Chelsea tractors so I had to wait my turn. However, the guy who did recover it was friendly and efficient, and got me there in the end. Luckily for me I broke down outside a nice pub with wifi so I was able to work from there in relative comfort.