To think the RAC is ridiculous!

[Tinktravels]

Currently broken down, middle of nowhere on a back lane.
Took me over half an hour to get through and then they said they would text me an ETA.
270 MINUTES!
I called back and waited again they said yes atleast that long.
Aibu to think this is ridiculous service!
Or is this normally how long it takes? Never had to call breakdown before so is this the norm?

I get them through my insurance and I dont bother at all. In general people don’t break down often so the couple of times I have I just called round garages and someone offers breakdown services!
i deffo wouldn’t pay for it!

To be clear. I pay the garage for breakdown recovery lol!

i wouldn't pay the RAC or AA unless I was breaking down on a yearly basis.

and I have a 13 year old pile of rust for a car, before anyone accuses me of having a posh new car that doesn’t break down!

Doesn’t surprise me. Ds called them out a couple of weeks ago. Told 4 hours. 4 1/2 hours later they text him to say it would be another 7 hours! Luckily we were able to go and pick him up.
The guy who finally turned up was from a local garage so I’m guessing they are having issues with staffing and outsourcing jobs.

I hope you don’t have to wait too long.

If you feel unsafe at all then contact them and tell them. I don't know if you are male or female but I'm female and was in a similar situation and I stressed to them how scared I was and they came out very quickly. I think they must allow for people in vulnerable positions.

@Mangogogogo mines through the insurance too, definitely won't be using them after this!

It does vary, I once had trouble around this time of year, just after Christmas and lots of people heading back home and in poor weather. It took a few hours that time. A few months ago, the car wouldn’t start on my drive and I was amazed to be attended to within 40 minutes particularly as I live rurally.

Tbf if you're on a "back lane in the middle of nowhere" then of course it's going to take some time for them to find the nearest rescue crew, allocate them the job on a priority basis, allow them time to finish the job they're on (if necessary) and travel to your location ... Under the circumstances 3hrs is not unreasonable.

AA no better.
It took me 8+ hours to get home last month, after breaking down 80 miles away. First guy arrived after an hour but after diagnosing a total engine failure could only take me to Shrewsbury because 'borders', I then spent 5 hours in Dobbies waiting for guy 2 who could bring me home to Bham, watching the update texts get later & later. I nearly cried in the gardening glove aisle.

And as a woman on my own I was supposedly 'priority' 😂
Both AA men were very nice & knowledgeable though. Can't fault them as individuals.

I waited 4 hours once and the emergency highways guys ended up calling the local recovery people, they charged me £250 to tow me about 5 miles home and I had to get the actual people who I had paid for the service to refund me. It was the same guy that should have been called but the people I had paid for this service never put the call through. Completely fucking useless.

I have ditched RAC after many years and gone for Mayday - no idea if they are any better yet but I waited a similar amount of time - it's too long.

Left on the M1 all night with my 2 daughters, probably made the mistake of limping into a service station. They pass you around from pillar to post and won't respond to any complaints after the event. Sorry for your predicament OP x

They’re bloody ridiculous. When I called them out last spring they kept texting me every 30 mins to let me know they hadn’t forgotten me. After about 6 hours they rang me to say they couldn’t come out until the next morning. I was apoplectic! Dh came and collected me but he could have done that 6 hours earlier if they hadn’t kept me hanging on😡

It varies. My dad broke down this morning, contacted the RAC at 12.15 and they were with him by 1pm

@melj1213
4 and a half at least they said!
If this is the norm it's WAY to long in my opinion to leave someone stranded.
Could be without food or water or much charge in your phone

They are useless. They left me heavily pregnant (I gave birth a week later) at the side of the road in a heat wave! When I rang to see what was going on the really rude later told me to calm down, a recovery vehicle had been assigned and it was coming from..... 165 miles away!!! When I questioned this she told me it was only an inch away on the map!!!

They've always reached me pretty quickly whenever I've needed them. One of those times I was in a dangerous situation but the others not.

It's like A&E though isn't it? Depends what else has happened, how busy they are, and where you sit in the priority list after triage.

DH Has been given 300 minutes this evening with RAC

It does take a while , and whatever age the car breakdown and recovery is worthwhile IMO . We had a puncture in my sisters relatively new car earlier this year and she had no spare just a foam filler thing , ended up being towed back from South London at 4am . The real moral of this tale being that you should ensure you have a proper spare wheel , which is what all of our family have now got .

DS broke down on the motorway a couple of weeks ago, tried the RAC via his insurance. Apparently every single breakdown truck in the area was unavailable because it was their Xmas night out!???! He managed to get a guy local to us for £150.

DS1 has them through his insurance too and needed them a few weeks ago. He’s in the army and had left his car for a few weeks while on a course, when he returned it was making a knocking noise so he booked it into the garage and wanted the RAC to tow him because he was worried it was the timing chain. It took them 7 hours to get to him, then said if he wanted it towed it would be another 7hrs, but he could drive it because it wasn’t the timing chain. So he did and it was all fine fortunately.

He cancelled them and got AA cover that weekend. I don’t know if they’re better or not, but the RAC are a joke atm.

WTF? Who on earth authorised that?

We are with green flag and are priority due to disabled child.
Called them last month and was told 2 1/2 hour eta !
Got a mobile mechanic out within 20 minutes and cancelled our membership.

They left my elderly mother who had recently had a stroke and her partner with a heart condition waiting over 12 hours. Twice they were told someone was on the way and when they never arrived my mother called back to be told the call out had been cancelled! In the end an independent person came and sorted them out, he told them he had been local and available all day and night by this time! They're terrible.

Of course it does, but having had 2 long waits and hearing plenty of other stories (on here and elsewhere) it would appear to me that the RAC haven't provided enough resources to cover the customers they have. They ought to be pretty good at working out projected demand so the fact there are consistently long waits suggests they are not spending enough on services.
The fact that they are owned by a Luxembourg based French Private Equity and investment company and the Singapore sovereign wealth fund may explain why they would be keen to maximise income at the expense of services.

They have a good business model, so why should they bother changing anything, £135 Million profit last year, and as the CEO comments

Dave Hobday, Chief Executive Officer, commented:
“In a second year challenged by Covid-19 I am proud that we have delivered another strong performance in 2021 completing a decade of uninterrupted growth.
This performance again demonstrates the strength of our proposition and subscription model, with more members joining RAC, staying longer and spending more. The power of this is exemplified by another record year of low churn in our Consumer division and all roadside Corporate partner tenders renewing."

In the light of the profits, the actual service, like many these days, is pretty irrelevant.

Maybe, many years ago, service was actually important, however today, its just all about the bottom line, so less patrols, less recovery vehicles, and the poor people on the frontline are flat out.