European breakdown advice - we’re stuck in Calais

[Strangerdanger1]

Posting in AIBU for traffic

We’ve driven to Calais and broken down. The auxiliary belt and a pulley have failed. The van is now impounded awaiting a garage on Monday - if the AA can find one.

Has anyone got any advice with dealing with the AA / what we should expect? We were left for 15 hrs in the heat with the vehicle yesterday. No one gives the same advice to us, they keep suggesting different options, failing to find accommodation locally and generally messing us around currently…

Just to add to the issues, my son has learning needs; he is attached to the van and some of the sports equipment inside.

What do your policy documents say? There are different levels of cover so nobody here can tell you what you should be getting.

I assume you bought breakdown cover for France. What does that policy say?

We have AA European cover - hotels for the weekend up to £500, return travel if vehicle cannot be fixed up to £1500, tow truck transport and repairs if possible.

More looking for anecdotes that what my policy should allow 🙃 it’s gonna be a long few days of faff, I think. I need some moral support 😂🤦🏻‍♀️

The thing is that every case will be different OP. We broke down in France a few years ago. Our insurance were pretty good. Car towed to nearby garage, we got a taxi back to our apartment. The garage had to get parts in and fit them, which took from Sun-Weds so we had no car for four days (on a week-long holiday). We got buses instead and took a taxi to the garage to pick the car up when it was fixed. None of it was ideal, but I was just glad we had breakdown insurance and were able to get around and back home on schedule.

@zurigo thats the dream situation I had in my head.

so far, we’ve got towed from the motorway by the French motorway contractors, dumped near a compound and left for 15hrs - we slept in the van as nowhere available to stay and didn’t want to be wandering the streets until daylight 😱

Last night we were allocated a hotel room, tonight we have to fend for ourselves as they couldn’t find one in their budget 🤦🏻‍♀️

Tomorrow, we’re back to the same hotel as yesterday… then they’re not sure 😬

Fingers crossed, they allocate a garage on Monday - totally happy to stay in Calais and wait until the end of the week after next (obviously, pay ourselves for accommodation), rather than be sent home to fly back for the van. The beach and playground are brilliant. Just found out the local bus is free too!

Hi op sending moral support I don't understand why your van was sent to a compound and not a garage !
@zurigo which insurance did you have !!

Hi. Hope your Ok.

Our motorhome broke down and this garage in/near Calais were great
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Mr36cqVd7ucpQF2X6?g_st=ac
Also reasonable priced hotels nearby and a large shopping centre. Also as you say I think the buses are free and the beaches lovely, hope you get sorted quickly.

Not the AA but Allianz. Broke down on a bank holiday. Recovered from motorway, Allianz choose to recover is to the IK that day and promised recovery of the car in 8 days. I next saw my car a month later after friend in the motor industry pulled in a massive favour.
it only took the garage 5 mins to fix the car, Allianz should have kept us there to the next day recovered the car to the correct garage and then we could have come home,

This is where you find out if you purchased a budget option or the full monty! Or something in between. Next time you breakdown after reviewing your policy you will know what you need in future. It's a very hard lesson and one we learnt from the first breakdown abroad.

If you had a top notch policy you would have, after one phone call to your insurers, been transported onto the ferry and taken home with accommodation included. Budget option it's do it yourself with a very little help.

I hope you got home safely with not too much of a financial load.

Disgraceful ! We know who to avoid

Thank you for the moral support ☺️ and thank you for the garage suggestion @Filly65

@Dobeebeedah who do use for European breakdown now? Stupidly, I left it to my DH who did not read any T&Cs… though he did pay for all the extra bits, not that this is much use with the AA it seems. I was busy with SENDIAS and the ENHCP process for my son.

Currently, we’re still stuck in Calais with no solution until at least Monday. Because the AA pass everything on to another company, it’s very difficult to get any sense out of them.

At the moment, we’re debating using the AA to get home and then pay for repatriation as the van contains a lot of our everyday stuff for my son’s learning needs and it is my day to day vehicle for work and getting to my son’s appointments.

Frustratingly, the fix is obvious and takes 2-3 hours labour (crankshaft pulley and auxiliary belt), but no decision can be made as it has not even been assessed by a garage - it’s still at the motorway compound. Unti it is assessed, there’s no decision on what can happen next.

I know this is no use now.
However for all pp's in future, if your holidays allow, always do your long journey to and from Europe on a Monday.
I dread breaking down in France on a weekend, nothing is open on a Sunday afternoon.

We broke down in the alps a few yrs ago. The £150 RAC euro cover was the best money I ever spent! Yes, their communication was patchy at times. But they paid for everything!… car tow to garage (who couldn’t fix it), so a hire car for reminder of the trip (2 weeks). New ferry tickets and hotels at ferry ports - because we couldn’t use our planned shuttle return due to no car. We’re had to walk on the ferry, but then RAC arranged another hire car in Dover and we drove home. We had to pay for a few things upfront, but then claimed it all back.
Our car was repatriated about 3 months later to our local garage.

@Strangerdanger1 ”At the moment, we’re debating using the AA to get home and then pay for repatriation as the van contains a lot of our everyday stuff for my son’s learning needs and it is my day to day vehicle for work and getting to my son’s appointments.”

Why would you come home? The van will likely be fixed by Wednesday.

We had green flag i think. We were on a month long tour and broke down on the outskirts of Zagreb - the clutch went. Recovery mechanic didn't speak English, and our car make was very uncommon in Croatia, but (probably purely down to luck) he knew a specialist garage where the mechanic raced them! Mechanic also spoke no English... still no idea how we managed it. Would have been a long wait for a part but given the type of garage they managed to source a second hand one. It was fixed in a few days.

I think our cover was very basic (literally just fix at side of road or tow to a garage), we had to find a cheap hotel ourselves and i think we were stuck there about 3 days. Used taxis to get to and from the garage. No kids which made it easier.

My friend in the motoring trade investigate after my experience it is the repatriation of the car that is the problem. There is no enough transport for all the vehicles hence why it takes so long. I would stay with your van and push for it to be fixed in France.

It took weeks for our car to get repatriated after it broke down in France, not helped by Brexit. The worst part was the French motorway recovery people who just took us off the motorway and dumped us in their yard in the middle of nowhere, eventually we got taxis to civilisation.

We had the cheapest money saving expert breakdown and it was fine, if not speedy. Between that and travel insurance, we weren’t out of pocket at all.

Were you on your way home or are you trying to get to accommodation for which you have already booked and paid? On the rare occasions we have broken down in France we have just located a local garage and got them to fix it. Even before the internet and mobiles, if you tell them what is wrong, or even better, show them, I have found people helpful. Luckily it has been when we were in the middle of the holiday so we had accommodation so just were without a car or motorbike for a day or two if they needed to get parts. Looking online, there are a number of rooms for 3 in Calais. Alternatively, if doable, one of you travels home with your son and the other waits to bring the van back.

Wait for the garage to tell you what’s what tomorrow, or Tuesday, then decide.
Sounds like a simple fix.
In the meantime consider if you’d rent a van, put what you need in it, and continue the holiday.

We were on our was from Calais to Germany with the first campsite booked. Obviously, we’ll lose the price for this (negligible).

We’re In Calais still - treating it like a beach holiday. Our return ferry is not until 24th August, so we can justify staying until then and paying for accommodation, but not sure anything will happen even then.

The issue seems to be finding a garage as many apparently close or reduce work for August.

@zurigo which insurance did you have !!

Sorry, I can't remember - it was in 2019. It was probably LV, that's who I usually have and they were brilliant when I was in an accident in the UK (not my fault - another driver rear-ended me).

An essential difference between our situation and the OP's is that we were not in a camper van - we were staying in a cottage and we managed to get there before the car broke down. It was behaving weirdly on the journey, but we nursed it along and it broke down on the Sunday when we were only a short distance away from our cottage. If we'd been in a camper van then we'd have been relying on them to accommodate us, which fortunately we weren't.

I dread breaking down in France on a weekend, nothing is open on a Sunday afternoon.

Yes, this is very true. Tow-trucks work every day, but garages are only open Mon-Fri and possibly Sat am. But if you break down after noon on Sat you'll be waiting until Monday for any kind of diagnosis on your car. Don't expect the garage to have the parts in stock either unless it's French made (and even then they may not). The fix on our car was quite quick, but the parts had to be ordered in and that took two days (Mon-Tues), then it was fixed on Weds.

We broke down on a French motorway a few years back, towed to a yard, then to another in the middle of no where in the pouring rain and dumped at a bus stop for hours! Eventually given a hotel but being August everything was very slow. At one point we received a call asking us where our car was - we had no idea at this point as it had been moved to a garage. We had just picked up a hire car to head home when the car was suddenly fixed! (Well it broke down again as not fixed properly but we were back in uk at this point!)

I’d probably book into a static caravan at a campsite in Calais, it would give you a base and avoid the hotel roulette you are currently experiencing. At least it would feel like you were on holiday. We were “lucky” engine blew on way to Dover 😂