AA lied! WWYD?

[misstrot]

I am FUMING! Lies! OMG-please read-sorry it's long-I need advice!
DD (20) hit a small piece of debris on motorway on the way home from uni on the motorway. Car seemed ok but next time she took it out it overheated so we called AA. Patrolman said everything was fine-it just needed oil and water (he filled water but we had to go get the oil) Now DD is a bit nervy driving so she asked was he sure it was ok to drive back to uni (2 hr drive) and he assured her-yes. Then I asked him and he said he 'wouldn't send a young girl onto the motorway in the car if he didn't believe the car was perfectly safe and roadworthy' Enter DH who asks him is he sure ok-doesn't need to be checked at the garage as his DD is very precious and he wants her to be safe etc-again AA reiterates 'all safe-all roadworthy-doesn't need anything doing"- I follow him to the van to input my email/sign attendance from and he tells me no need.
You guessed it-she goes back to uni and breaks down on the M4 in bad weather (it takes 5+ hours for them to send a recovery truck and she is traumatised!)
We get the car delivered back here and ask a local garage to come and look. The garage owner states the car had a severe water leak (the AA didn't pressure test the system) which has caused car to overheat and blown the head gasket-so dead. Bearing in mind DD worked and saved up all summer and only bought the car in August- from a reputable National chain and paid £4000 (it's a little mini) she is devastated.
Ok, so we send report to AA and ask for compensation/new (2nd hand) engine for car. They send an 'Independant Assessor' (paid for by AA and does most of his work for AA so not really independent!?) who literally spends 4 mins taking photos -opens the bonnet and says the head gasket has gone and leaves. His report states that it was our fault for driving it as the head gasket had gone (for clarity it was fine before-no smoke from exhaust and only had a full service and 120 point check in August etc)
The AA then state the patrolman informed us that the car was not roadworthy and should be taken to a garage so they don't hold liability!!!!!! WTF! A complete LIE and 360 on what he said to us. Sadly too late to download Ring doorbell footage to support us -as its gone and he never sent us an emailed report stating what he did or advised-normal protocol. Help! What can I do?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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'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.

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

Traumatised
Nervy driver
Mummy and daddy getting involved

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

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

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.

AA comes out, checks car, highlights water and oil need topped up! Potential causes of overheating. Fair enough he shouldn’t have said it was perfectly fine without doing more extensive checks but, realistically, that’s your first line checks.

DD should absolutely have pulled over as soon as warning light came on.

Another one here backing pp’s and advise maybe DD shouldn’t be driving on the motorway if such an event leaves her so traumatised. It’s life experience and she needs to learn to deal with these things on her own without it all being so dramatic.

God this site is shite nowadays and such a lack of reading comprehension.

Also some cars don't have a temp gauge.

I'm confused by the first part of the OP, actually.

We you, DH and DD all in the car when it first overheated as you talk about all of you asking the AA man questions.

If not, I assume you called the AA to your home? But from what you've then described the car wasn't actually broken down - i.e. it still worked and drove - so why did you actually call them to it at home?

They're a breakdown service not a maintenance service so would only get your car going if it won't start at home, or tow it to a garage for repairing.

If it first overheated on another journey to the one you're fuming about, it should have gone to a garage to be looked at, not had the AA called to it.

You can opt to have home start on your breakdown cover.

OP is getting trashed here because simultaneously ‘why didn’t her daughter pull over immediately on the hard shoulder’ and ‘the AA are for non starts and emergencies’.

Sorry OP. It’s a waste of time coming here. Hope you get it sorted and your daughter is ok. Pulling over in the motorway can be scary apart from the damage.

Minis do though

Home start, not advice on basic car maintenance. Like check the water and oil if your car starts to overheat……..

Who said I was male?

Yes, but the car was not broken down. It had previously overheated. The AA are not a maintenance service, they would not have all had all of the equipment or the skill to do a full health check/service to determine categorically whether the car was roadworthy or not. The OP should have got it checked over by a garage if at all concerned about the car. This does not fall on the responsibility of the AA.

@Male101 crazy assumption to make!

Unfortunately I’m sure the AA will have a get out clause somewhere in the contract. Plus they’re saying it was logged as a unroadworthy. You can’t prove he said otherwise if you haven’t any paperwork saying otherwise. I’m sorry for you, it’s a crap situation, but it sounds a bit like you and your husband were worried it wasn’t roadworthy, so perhaps you should have sought another opinion or done a test drive before sending her off. And yes your daughter probably should have stopped earlier, particularly if the car had broken down previously. But I’m not judging her for that as I blew my gasket on my first car going back to college too!

And those pecking at or laughing the guy’s advice are making themselves look rather silly. It was a perfectly sensible reply, even if it wasn’t siding with the OP.

OP I think you need to get a copy of the AA’s paperwork ASAP, speak to an independent garage (although it will be very hard to prove that there was damage that made the engine lose water/oil when your daughter hit the debris (that’s not a great thing to do either!). They could say it happened on the next journey (as it indeed could have). It’s crap but I think you’ll be hard pressed to win this the way things have gone.

Bloody hell you’re a tough crowd on this thread. Most posters ignoring the fact that the AA patrol man advised the OP’s daughter that it was safe to drive the car on to university. She took that advice and it turned out to be the wrong advice. Now the AA have denied that conversation took place and have lied and said they advised don’t drive the car.
Some asking what harm could she come to while waiting on the hard shoulder for hours. It’s a well established fact that sitting on the hard shoulder carries the risk of being ploughed into by another car. It’s not a safe place to be.

So I just asked my partner about this, he's very knowledgeable on cars. He pointed something important out. Does the car still have its protective engine bay under tray in place ? If that was missing, as is often the case when lazy garages do services and don't replace them ? If its missing - hitting a small piece of debris can result in damage to coolant pipes or other parts inside the engine bay - which should be protected from underneath by the tray. The 120 point check sheet you had done in August should have highlighted if this was missing. ..?