breakdown cover

[betty boop]

that time of year again- last year having taken up on the insurance offer to inc breakdown I was shocked to read the major differences between breakdown cover.

it would seem, from my reading, that anything other than a top dollar cover from the big 3 and AA/RAC/Green flag that you are hit n miss on the car being recovered, so forget trailers.

one policy worded 'national recovery' as driving you to to a garage to await repair, if unrepairable they would take you home for an extra charge, another would leave at a garage 10miles from your breakdown area and then take you home only after 24hrs elapsed. Another policy from a BIG travel assistance company at £65 did not cover trailers at all - wording a significant charge would be levied if your car broke down and you had a caravan/trailer and it was to recovered also. Wording on my insurance sold green flag policy can easily be mis read with free national recover ONLY after I pay for a garage inspection and they cannot fix it on site within 48hrs.

From experience - FYI Pets are also an issue with some policies i.e. green flag with them refusing to carry a dog in the recovery vehicle and not allowing it in the recovered vehicle either.

I wasnt happy with the AA but RAC seem to come up trumpts and cheapest for 2 cars, green flag direct also OK but £30 more for 2 cars. I'd recommend carefully reading the policy nowadays as they all seem to be insurance policies rather than breakdown policies esp from 'comparison sites'

[ColinR]

We're with the AA but at last year's renewal I threw my toys out of the pram at the cost and they immediately reduced it to match the offer that they were giving new members. So much for customer loyalty. I'll be doing the same this year.

I do think their trailer cover is pretty poor though as I recall..

[Centaur]

I had a fortnight in mid-France a few years back, towing my boat behind my (then) VW Touareg, which was still under warranty and had full European recovery cover. However, before I went, I contacted VW to check that the boat and trailer would be covered and was assured that they too would be recovered / repatriated in the event of a breakdown.

We got there okay and launched the boat but shortly after the car went into 'limp mode'. This is a fail-safe mode for when the car has a problem or gets conflicting signals from its various sensors, causing it to only run very slowly and with minimal power - certainly not enough to tow a boat. I called the VW helpline and the car was towed away the next day and we were provided with a rental vehicle - an MPV that would not have been suitable for towing the boat even if it had a towbar....

It took the dealer a week to diagnose a failed sensor and determine that the part was on 'back order' and would not be available for a couple of months..... It was then that I was told that the boat / trailer combination was either too long, too wide or too heavy (not sure which) to be recovered under the warranty, despite having checked all this with them prior to the trip! The options were to wait in France for a couple of months awaiting the repair of my vehicle (yes, right...) or taking the rental vehicle to the coast and getting a foot-passenger ferry crossing back to the UK and collecting another rental car in the UK for our onward trip home (only home, mind you, I could not keep it whilst waiting for the repair). Subsequently, I would be able to reverse this process and return to France to collect my car and, if it had not been stolen / pillaged / torched etc, my boat and trailer.

No mention was made anywhere in the warranty paperwork that foreign rental vehicles could not be taken into the UK or that my Eurotunnel tickets would be useless as we would not be allowed to travel as foot passengers but that was what I was told. The prospect of transporting all our luggage by hand was pretty far-fetched but there was simply no way that we would have been able to take all the boating kit too - that would all have to stowed on the boat to be pillaged in the months that we would be away.

Fortunately, all this did not come to pass. I spoke to my local VW dealer in the UK, who confirmed that the part was indeed on back order but that they had one in group stock. We got this couriered to the French dealer who was able to fit the part and get the car mobile again on the day before our planned homeward journey. Whilst the part was fitted under warranty, the part itself and the courier costs were not covered as the warranty, apparently, wouldn't cover sourcing parts from other EU states.


The moral of this sorry tale is very clear - be very careful to read all the small print in any UK or European recovery warranty, especially if you are planning to tow a trailer. If the warranty is not specific about maximum dimensions / weight limits for trailers etc, then get that in writing before you leave. Also, ask what happens if you break down en-route - will they take your trailer onwards to your destination (and home again after, if they can't fix your car) or will they just take it somewhere off the motorway. If it's the latter, you are going to be deprived of your boat for the duration and likely to find that it is kept in a less-than-secure compound or, worse, simply moved to the nearest motorway 'rest area'. Picture what happens to cars that are abandoned for any lenght of time and you can imagine what your boat will look like after being left on the side of a motorway - and I doubt that your boat insurance will cover losses due to such 'neglect' either...

[Ianfs]

The moral of this sorry tale is very clear - be very careful to read all the small print in any UK or European recovery warranty, especially if you are planning to tow a trailer. If the warranty is not specific about maximum dimensions / weight limits for trailers etc, then get that in writing before you leave.

Glad it was all ok in the end, but a very sad story indeed. I think the above is worth noting for future reference. It was only by accident that I stumbled upon the length/width restrictions the AA have for boat/trailer recovery.