Morris Minor Owners Club

Hi,

I have just been looking at taking out Rac cover, and rembered that oc members get a disscount. So I routed out my letter with the discount code on and rang the rac.

I thought it was great that as members we can get a disscount although, when I compared the quote they gave me using the members discount, (25% off) you can actually get a better discount from the rac website, just by going on the site and not even using a discount code, it was £8.00 a year cheaper than using the members discount!

Just thought I would let you all know! ;)

I joined the RAC a few years ago, i had the top cover where if i needed to be recovered there would be no stops just pick up and go all the way home. When i did need them i was stuck in London with a p6 3500s, the RAC guy was totally useless he wrecked the distributor, caused another car to hit me and then left me in the middle of the road where my female passengers that i was taking to the National center for Neurology had to help me push the car into a parking place. When we were ready to come home it took them 5 1/2 hours to send a patrol out to us then another 1 1/2 to get a recovery truck to us, then we had to change trucks at Scratchwood services where we collected another broken down vehicle that had to be dropped off first.
We got home at 3 30 in the morning, and we complained very strongly but they didnt want to know.
I personally wouldnt use the RAC again under any circumstances but i can highly recommend Green flag, used them 3 times now and i can`t fault them.

In response to your bad experience, my wife used to have rac cover, we live in leicester but were on holiday in scotland in a freelander.
The fan belt snapped in the car park at the bottom of ben nevis and left us completely stuck. I rang the rac, within an hour there was a patrol with us, he chopped a bit of loose fan belt off and left the remainder, he said it may break a few miles down the road or may get us all the way back to where we where staying (150 miles away). As it happen it broke about 20 miles down the road, but within minutes the rac patrol was with us as he was taking the same route home as we where driving. He stopped and organised for a flat bed truck to come and pick us and the car up, as you can't tow a freelander. The truck was with us within an hour and drove us the remaining 130 miles back to the house we had rented.
The following morning we had to drive the 400 miles home to leicester. The rac patrol that had helped us the previous day drove an hour to get us a fan belt and fitted it for us, all he asked for was the £10 for fan belt. I gave him some money to get himself a beer and all was good.
I was very impressed with the service we received and could not have asked for any more. If I was to have to pay for the wagon to drive us back to the house it would have cost me hundreds of pounds.

So maybe rather than just being the rac it depends very much on the individual they send out to you.

If you have classic car insurance with RH (and some others) - then roadside assistance and recovery home is included in the cost! Only for your classic of course - if you want personal cover for any car - you have to arrange that carefully, because otherwise RAC etc may only cover your nominated car- not you in any car!

As a matter of intrest the AA are doing personal cover (covers the driver for any car) at the moment for £77.00.
I did have a very bad experience with the RAC and in total i had 4 diffrent people out and not one knew what they were doing.
It probably wouldnt have got to me so much if their head office dealt with the complaint in a proffessional manner, they were worse than the patrol men.
Its interesting to hear of other peoples experiences with the diffrent breakdown services though.

Get your insurance from footman james - it includes european breakdown recoverey.

From a personal perspective, when I was a kid I used to work in a garage that did recovery, and we occasionally got handed RAC/AA recovery jobs, but got green-flag/national-breakdown jobs all the time.

The thing with a company that has it's own vans is that by preference they will wait and wait until on of their own vehicles is available. Wheras with a company that has no vans of it's own and passes that business out to a local garage then the local garage makes a fair wack out of coming out to you so they will jump on it!

So IMO if you choose a breakdown service that doesnt have any of their own vans then you will get a better service than those that do.

Footman James recover is green flag (iirc) and they dont have their own vans ;)

Green Flag do have their own vans..... I've been assisted by one before