Yesterday at lunchtime, my car broke down at Gretna Green, I called the AA and they recovered us to the services. We were then kicking our heels until 9pm waiting for a recovery home to Liverpool… but they didn’t tell me that we’d be kicked out thirty miles down the road in the driving rain to wait for the next company to take us home.
I had four kids with me… one is my son who is autistic who functions very well indeed but absolutely needs routine, sleep, calm and most importantly melatonin at night or he literally cannot sleep at all. Staying in a hotel room would not be an option for us, we were even scrabbling around in the boot for some random melatonin so we could stay if we had to.
The app didn’t work. I phoned them about 24 times stressing that we absolutely had to get home. Half the time there were arrangements made which the disappeared off the system, we had to watch others break down and be recovered while we stood there twiddling our thumbs. Somebody would be turning up and the next minute the job would be cancelled. We were constantly being told we were at the top of the priority list because of my son and his medical needs but couldn’t or didn’t seem to be able to help in any other way.
They refused to send us a taxi, refused to pay for a hotel room. Refused to do anything but sit and wait, we had exhausted all fun options and eating opportunities and it was chucking it down. I’m proud to say the children were brilliant, they barely even complained. They really didn’t care about my options as a lone woman with a bunch of kids in the dark with piles of pissed men circling around.
We were finally sent a taxi at 11pm and got home at 1am. I had been calling around all sort of taxi firms to try and get us home with no luck. But these guys have contracts with taxi firms and would have been able to sort it much sooner if they’d bothered.
Apparently this happens all the time…one of the driver said he’s known of elderly people left sitting for 8 hours....
I don’t have such a problem if there’s a “lack of resource” because yea it’s a Sunday night height of summer, but for such a big organisation to refuse to dig deep and take some responsibility for getting us home was shocking.
Is this normal? I’ve never needed them before. We have gold level coverage or whatever and they were absolutely deplorable. Been with them for years, goodbye AA.