Any advice for vehicle towing charging £320 for 16 miles?

[LiarLiarKnickersAblaze]

Is that about right price wise or too much? If too much then what steps can I take to reduce or do I have to bite bullet and pay?

We’ve decided to scrap the car as it’s v old and costs more to repair than it’s worth (for context it’s worth about £400). We suspect they may suspect this and are hoping we hand it over to them for scrap.

It’s a service used by police. Didn’t have to use police one but couldn’t get through to AA as it was so busy so a kind officer offered to organise and told us it would be £190 (appreciate we can’t quote him on that!).

I would query it with the company. The figure the officer has mentioned is around the price we've been told it costs (police despatcher) Obviously you can't quote him on that because he was only telling you what he believed in good faith.

£320 seems very steep. The company our Force uses have vehicles literally out & about waiting for calls from us and customers so it's not like they have to travel a huge amount ro get to you

Definitely query it & say you were led to believe it would be just under £200

That is steep. I was told it’d cost £250 for an 8 mile tow up the A9 by a police officer though. Irritatingly it would be the same subcontractors that my breakdown people(RAC )used. They just hadn’t bothered to call it through at that point. I called them back and nice police officer had a word to confirm my story. They sent the job straight out luckily so was covered.

Maybe depends on the type of breakdown.

About 6 years ago my 15 year old car fell spectacularly to bits about 15-20miles from home. The first breakdown people I called took one look and said that due to the nature of the breakdown they could not tow me as I needed a lowloader. That ended up costing me just over £200. That was over 6 years ago.

Where is the car? If it's safe until the morning a scrap merchant should collect it and pay you for the vehicle. You'd need to meet them with the v5, keys etc. that's how it works where I live,

Forget the value of the car. Is it on the public road and you have been told to move it to a safe location? If so, the recovery company can ask whatever price they want. It will be dependent on location, is it roadworthy, is access to it easy enough to get a truck to.

To pull a car with suspension and steering damage out a ditch on a busy slippery road is far more expensive to do than collect from a residential driveway during the day.

I might have to do this to get confirmation from the dispatch/officer but appreciate it might be a stretch.

Was a ‘normal’ pick up ie standard tow used

It was in a lay-by

It it’s to be scrapped just call the local scrapyards and see if they’ll buy it from wherever it’s broken down. They may end up paying you.. the last time I scrapped a car I got the grand sum on £40.

I think that's what we'll have to do.

I did some more research this morning & they are charging the standard statutory amount for towing a car with 'substantial damage': https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/circular-0032023-charges-for-vehicle-recovery/circular-0032023-charges-for-the-removal-storage-and-disposal-of-vehicles-under-road-traffic-law#:~:text=The%20prescribed%20removal%20charge%20for,75%20in%20the%202008%20Regulations).

However, both the incident report & the officer at the scene said it wasn't substantial damage, but there's not much I can do as the freedom of information request would take 20 working days for official wording on state of the car not being substantial damage to come through. Allowing them to scrap it seems the best option.

I had a scrap car that barely moved

I put it on eBay for spare and repairs

I was honest about the condition

Got £600 for it and the bloke collected it on a car transporter

Loads of people buy broken cars and break them down to sell the parts individually

If you have a car even a scrap one people will normally still pay you for it

if the layby is by your home and scrap company should be paying you to scrap it! a north Essex business took my car from East Herts and paid me about £400 bang on 2 years ago

No. I had to get this low loader vehicle out. The "normal" tow vehicle, i.e. one which would fasten a hook to the underneath of the front of the car, wouldn't work well as that was the bit that was broken.

Forget the value of the car. Is it on the public road and you have been told to move it to a safe location?

This is also relevant.

When mine broke I knew immediately that I would be scrapping it due to the age and probable value of the car and the extent of the breakdown. However just leaving it where it was until I could get a scrap merchant out wasn't really an option because it was on a fairly busy road. It wasn't blocking the road but it wasn't pulled over to the side so it was causing an obstruction. Also it was a Sunday afternoon so I would have had to leave it there overnight which really wouldn't be OK as someone might have crashed in to it in the dark.