AA lied! WWYD?

I’ve had my car over heat and I barely had enough time to pull to hard shoulder. Luckily there was one.
I was still scared even though I’m an adult with a mobile phone. Cars/ tricks going by b fast and it only takes a second of inattention.

Haha @neverknowinglyunreasonable love a man coming on to Mumsnet just for comments like this! Why are there so many of them?

Traumatised
Nervy driver
Mummy and daddy getting involved

I hope OP's DD isn't driving the same roads as me.

Are people actually reading the OP?
She's angry because the AA are lying about what was originally said to the DD.

I'm not really understanding why you would call the AA if the car had previously overheated. I thought the AA were for emergency call outs and non starts, not for a mechanical investigation of a previous problem. Surely you should have got it checked out by a garage rather than asking them if it was roadworthy. There would have been no way of them checking this without a full service/health check.

You can't possibly claim it's the AA's fault she ignored the overheating to the point it trashed the engine.

Absolutely this. The oil being low suggests it not being driven/looked after by a particularly sympathetic owner.

I have no useful advice about where you stand but just wanted to say that years ago I had a breakdown, my exhaust fell off. The guy that came out tied it on with a bit of string and told me it would be find to drive the 40 miles home. I refused and said I wanted to be towed to the garage near my house 40 miles away which I was entitled to. He was livid and ranted all the way about how he was missing his dinner for me (twat, it was his job). I was 25 and had no phone on my, I'd rung my dp from a phone box. He drove the truck at 35mph all the way back, I suspect just to be an even bigger twat and then left me in the middle of an industrial estate in the dark even though he was supposed to drop me home. By this time dh had rung my insurance company yo try and track me down because he thought something had happened to me.

Stick to your guns and be persistent, work your way up their chain of management with your complaints.

I'm old enough to remember the sad case of Marie Wilks in 1988 (see wikipedia for details).

I think you’re getting a very hard time here.
I’m guessing AA person is covering his tracks. I’d issue a small claims
court claim and see AA’s response after that. It’s likely they’ll settle for the initial mistake, especially when asked in court where the original report is.
As for subsequent damage, I don’t think they will cover that but you never know.

She took it out and it overheated, so AA were not the people to call out. They are a breakdown service.

Presumably they checked the car by sight as were not looking at it closely in a garage. Like when you go to the drs, it makes sense to assume the obvious things first.

When she drove to university surely she saw that it was overheating again?

I doubt AA are to blame or that you can claim compensation. Somewhere in their fine print, they will be absolved of blame for bad advice.

It is a shame your dd had to wait for five hours though. They are usually much quicker to motorway breakdowns, and prioritise lone females. But 'traumatised' is hyperbolic.

Sometimes cars break down. She hit debris and it caused a problem. That's all there is to it really.

Hah. I (many, many, years ago) had the literal opposite of this happen, also thanks to phoning the AA. I was on the M1, car temp shot up, so I pulled over, waited 4-5h for the AA who never showed but they sent a local garage tow truck. Driver peered under bonnet, said it's probably the head gasket love, don't drive it (with no checking anything else) and then charged me £150 (cash on spot) to tow me to my folks. That was terrifying as I didn't know this guy and I had to sit in the truck for 50 miles with him.

I called the nearest main dealer garage the following day. They turned up, peered under the bonnet, removed the roll of masking tape from the fan that the service folk back home had left there 2 days previously, laughed and then drove it off for checks. Cost me a fortune that as a postgrad student I didn't have. Could barely afford the car.

I wrote a very stiff letter to the AA noting that if their so-called partner engineer had checked properly, I'd not be out £150 and that I expected better etc. and I wanted my money back. They refused to take any liability and offered me a free year's membership, which was at the time £38. I think I may have told them to stuff it.

I've been with the RAC ever since.

Good luck with your complaint, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

I'd be very angry about this as well, OP.
I don't know what you can realistically do about it, though.

I would definitely complain to the AA, they gave poor advice and the lack of paperwork is suspect.

However, I’d question if your DD is mature enough to be driving if she’s traumatised from something as mundane as waiting for a recovery. If you get behind the wheel of a car it’s something you have to be prepared for, even if the car is brand new you can get flat tires etc. If trashy celeb gossip is your thing apparently Harry Styles waited 2 hours after getting a flat tire on the way to or from Soho Farmhouse this weekend and I’m sure his car wasn’t a banger!

This.

And agree the use of traumatised is a bit much here.

All saying DD should have pulled over, maybe it happened quickly or the motorway was busy so she pulled over as soon as she could?
my clutch pedal once snapped off - luckily I was going into a Drive Through not down a motorway or any main road - but if I had been driving along it wouldn’t have mattered when I pulled over because it happened with no escalation, maybe this was the same. AA did lie so YANBU

This.

The AA guy was mistaken and is now arse-covering, which is infuriating but equally you’re highly unlikely to be compensated for a replacement engine if your daughter was driving for miles with warning lights on, as other people have (totally fairly, regardless of sex!) pointed out.

But for a 20 year old to be ‘traumatised’ because her car broke down is an extreme response, regardless of the conditions. If she’s so lacking in confidence and is in any case ‘nervy’ (and therefore potentially dangerous) on the motorway, wouldn’t the coach or train be a better option?

Firstly, I wouldn't rely on the AA to pass a car off as roadworthy, that's not their job. Yes, the guy probably shouldn't have said what he said but ultimately it's the driver's responsibility. If you car starts overheating it tells you, and you don't just blindly carry on driving to the point that you damage it to such an extent.

She’s already explained this- and indeed this is the whole point of her post that people are not getting- the AA denied that the man had assured them that the car was safe to drive.

THAT is the lying bit, she’s not saying that his conclusion that the car was safe was a lie.

Please don't misuse the word traumatised

@Burnamer do you know I thought the exact same thing about the username and response they're getting.

It's common knowledge to pull over and what Male said is completely understandable.

I think this is why the original AA responder wouldn’t let you sign anything - because he lied to you 3 times like Peter.
What did AA say when you told them what he’d done?

Took

I think this is a fair point. When I was about 26 or 27 I required AA assistance whilst driving back through Scotland just after Christmas. I waited about three or four hours and this was in the 90s so I didn’t even have a phone or iPad to keep me company. I think I had a book and bought a newspaper and just waited it out. It wasn’t much fun, but it was a very very long way from traumatic.

Are the AA really there for routine repairs? “The next time she tool it out it overheated” If that had been me, and my car, parked up at my family home , I would have taken it to a garage,or called out a mobile engineer, or even ( radical thought) checked the water and oil levels myself, not called out the AA. They are there for breakdowns and home starts, not sorting out engine problems,

I'm really enjoying this thread.
Great badinage.

Do cars have big ends these days? Because I always think that sounds like such a silly name for a car part.

(misses point of thread)