To be furious with the AA

[TheDelayyAA]

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.

There's been lots of complaints about AA and recovery services in general, as the industry is not regulated or governed by anyone.

Look for the guardian newspaper financial columnist advice letters where they help you with money issues. They have helped people with complaints when companies refused refunds or apologies.

DH broke down on Saturday. He thought he might have RAC cover, so tried ringing them. All he got was a recorded message saying they would take ages to answer the phone. So who knows how long it would take to actually get to him. He ended up leaving the car and walking to a station.

My only time I had to call out the RAC, they said they would take a long time to reach me as I was in "a remote location". I'd be fine with that if I'd been in Snowdonia or similar, but I was just in the middle of Essex.

It sounds like green flag is the way to go.

I had a similar experience with AA about ten years ago, I left at the next renewal and would never go back.

They initially sent a guy on a bike to look at it, despite us being very clear it was highly likely to need towing (engine management light on, car stopped and wouldn't start). We'd had a similar breakdown recently and it was the same issue again.

It was a couple hours wait for the first guy, he took a quick look and put in a request for a tow truck. I rang to chase after another couple of hours and was told tow truck was on his way. Rang back after another hour and was then told they had no record of the tow truck being ordered and the incident had been closed as resolved.

I fully accept any roadside relay service is only as good as their resources in the area, but it's not great when mistakes are made by the call handlers/ their system.

I decided I wouldn't have faith in them to not lose me in their system again, so I voted with my feet.

No longer owned by its members.

See also most building societies and compare them to the service you get from most banks.

I had a similar experience in terms of only being taken part of the way and then left to wait for onward transport, but that was with Mercedes Assist (RAC). I'd had a puncture on my way back from Exeter, and with no spare and no emergency wheel Mercedes Assist picked me up somewhere on the A303, but only took me as far as Solstice services where, after waiting over an hour quite late in the evening on a Bank Holiday weekend for an onwards relay they ended up putting me up in the Holiday Inn and then organising a taxi home for me the following day (around 70 miles) as it was so late. The car didn't arrive back for around 3 days...it sat in Salisbury for ages. But, I was travelling alone and relatively sanguine about it though...I wasn't in a rush, and my local Mercedes dealer lent me a car until mine returned