We use a Nationwide Flex plus account , £10 month for a joint account (120/year for both of us)

Covers two of our cars (1 each because it's a joint account) for anyone to drive and covers myself and my wife in any UK registered car. European driving included (which we use!). Works well - my son tested it after leaving the lights on overnight in our old Octavia.

Also gives us travel insurance, mobile phone insurance (which my son also tried out after smashing his mobile phone screen)

Breakdown insurance can be relatively cheap but recovery can be very expensive - my sister had a clutch fail on her Mondeo in Yorkshire and was recovered back to Bristol. She uses GEM claimback, who were great, but the bill she claimed back was over £700. I would never be without it

Edited by Big John on 19/03/2017 at 23:05

For my very recent experience of European (and UK) rescue cover, see my recent thread 'Fracked in France'.

Although my cover is via NARPO at a very reasonable £75 a year (bet it goes up on renewal!) it's done by Call Assist. You can recognise their policies by the use of colours to describe the various levels of cover (purple, etc.).Looking at their website they offer their policies to be sold via third party organisations (e.g. NARPO) and I'm fairly sure that they are used by some manufacturers (e.g. MB).

I've had to use them a few times over the last four years (twice now for blown-off turbo pipes) and they've been superb. Only thing is (IMHO) that they pay about £3+ per mile for recovery, so the local contractor has little incentive to fix at roadside. I was recovered from Banbury (200 miles) when a pipe blew - it was fixed by my indy in less than an hour at no charge - but that recovery cost them nearly £800, as I understand it.

On the other hand, I called them out once when the engine undertray thing had partially detached, described the problem carefully on the phone, and they appropriately sent a mechanic with a van to fix it there and then (cable ties, I think) very quickly.

Years ago, I couldn't afford the luxury of breakdown cover and spent several unhappy hours roadside under the car. One occasion replacing a lost/broken throttle return spring with the spring from a biro and some rubber bands springs (see what I did there?) comes to mind. Now, I wouldn't be without it.

Most of the discussion has been about how much the cover as. But as I found out recently on a breakdown on the MI. My partners car was back at my repairers premises in 4 hours on one of the busiest days of the year.

Compare that with the family broken down next to me who were stilln at the service area at 3 the next morning still waiting.

Boost come top in Which and would have taken my dog which most of the other companies refuse to do.

Brittania do well as they serve mostly Health Service and Government employees who are maybe a little more straightforward when claiming. And they pay the recovery companies by return of post.