The scenario. It's DDs parents evening. DH was home with the DCs and I was at work that day. I got held up in traffic so I called DH and told him I'd meet them there. DH drove his car there and I drove mine.
The school is situated right next to a country park that has a little car park. We both parked there. The car park is only used at school run times and by dog walkers. It's not unusual to find it's been used to dump/burn out stolen cars overnight 
. It was already dark by the time we arrived.
When we came out of the school, we found DHs car wouldn't start. We were all hungry and the DCs needed to get to bed so we went home, had dinner etc and once the DCs were in bed, DH drove my car back to the car park to see if his car would start. He tried for an hour or so, then decided we'd need to call recovery out. His car isn't covered by any existing policy, so we rang round and found £108 was the cheapest call out charge to fix it if they could or tow it. DH rang the co, made the non-refundable payment of £108 and was told they'd be there within an hour.
About 45 mins later, DH arrives home. I ask what happened, he says 'I thought I'd better try the car again before the mechanic arrived and it started, so I called the co and cancelled the mechanic'. At this point he tells me the money he paid was non-refundable. He then goes out to his car and discovers it won't start again. So he's paid £108 for nothing. I suggested that it might have been better to let the mechanic come out in case it was something he could have fixed or at least we might have had an idea of what was wrong with it, plus if it hadn't got going, the mechanic could have towed it to the garage we use.
Now we're £108 out of pocket, the car isn't working, we don't know why and the car is stuck on our driveway.