Can anybody tell me who offers the best breakdown/roadside assistance?
I have looked at the AA, RAC, Green Flag etc. I thinking more along the lines of RAC, as the offer a No Callout Bonus.
Any thoughts?
Cheers
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Can't speak for any of the others but I've been with Green Flag for the last 5 years.
The only reason I went with them is because I get the Total Protection cover (incl. home call out) for £65 a year with my Lloyds TSB credit card.
I've only had to call them out twice (both times because battery acid on an old Proton corroded the battery terminals so I needed help to get started).
Don't know if this helps.
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I'm also with Direct Line and have always found them excellent. Unlike AA and RAC they use a network of local garages to come out to breakdowns so there's ussually not long to wait til they turn up. They also pay you £10 if they take longer than an hour to arrive, which only happened once to me and I have called them out quite a few times in the past when I had an ongoing starting problem that took some time to get to the bottom of. We also had a friend who belonged to the RAC who once waited 3 hours for them to turn up.
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I'm with Green Flag and would recommend them. I've had one "take me and my broken chariot back home", one "take me to a repairer" and one "get it started in the morning" in the last two or three years. Always very helpful and friendly and on time.
One difference which may affect your choice though: with Green Flag my car is covered whoever is driving, but I am not covered if I'm driving a different car. I think the AA and RAC do it the other way around - you're covered in someone else's car but your mate driving your car (without you in it) isn't. That's how it used to be but things may have changed.
hth
GJD
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I'm with RAC and - have never used them.
I took out the policy to cover me to drive a Morris Oxford o Bristol a few years ago. The car got there OK.
I suspect I may cancel and look at Direct Line of GF.
The AA were always good with me, when I had my series of 4 wheeled nightmares. It was cheaper than paying silly money for garages to come out all the time!
I have heard of the AA telling one of their members to replace their car, because it had received so many call outs!
Hugo
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I'm with Autoaid - £28 a year for full recovery, but you do have to sort out recovery yourself, and then claim back from them afterwards. Its a good system if you can afford to part with your money first off and then claim. Never had to claim myself, but my parents have and they never had any problem. They also have a 24hour support line to guide you to your nearest recovery people.
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Green Flag for me too. Used them 3 times and each time they have been there very fast and got me home. The mechanic's have, with the exception below, been excellent at their job and, importantly, customer service.
1 bad experience, but that was the garage they used, and GF paid for the damage, a burnt out catalytic converter caused by a moron posing as a mechanic. I told him to stop revving the engine while it was misfiring, but would he listen.....?
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Hi,
I too have been looking for decent breakdwon cover today, because my last cover was connected to an insurance policy which I have had to cancel (long story, and too boring to go into).
Online I have looked at all sorts, of course AA, RAC, Green Flag etc, and various other 'direct' companies.
I was stunned, however, when I went to Direct Line. Their quote to me is literally a third of what most of the others were asking, and I am wondering whether I have misread something, or if there are catches here which I have not yet realised.
The policy I asked for was the one which is usually termed option 3, ie everything except the European cover.
I would be really grateful to anyone that can comment on whether I am being naive here or not.
Thanks, and apologies to the thread author, although I hope that maybe this can help him too.
HF
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HF last time I looked at Direct Line insurance they didn't offer a courtesy car whilst yours is being repaired. No good to me as I live on the edge of the countryside and public transport just isn't an option.
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Seems to me that if Dorect Line is cheap for one thing for you, it's worth investigating any other insurance you need.
I have their road cover in with my insurance, it was so much cheaper than AA/RAC. Only used them once, they turned up within the hour as promised and changed my wheel...which was all I wanted them to do, so no complaints there.
Good point about courtesy cars, but usually supply of these has some strings attached, and as Godfrey implies, not everyone would need them
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Suprised that there is any difference between Direct Line and Greenflag. They are one in the same organisation. However if you can get one of their quoting engines to quote cheaper for same, all the better
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the AA have always been very helpful to me, on the 4 occasions i havea called them out and my cover has been upgraded so i have Home Start, but just pay for Relay.
Slightly off thread, but AA also offer mechanical and electrical breakdown insurance. This covers most of the big bits on the car up to £500 three times a year, and is costing me £26 a year. As my car has now done 92000 and is out of warranty, this extra protection makes sense to me.
Ok, it won't buy a whole new engine, but £500 towards a new engine is better than a poke in the eye.
Sadly it doesn't cover air conditioning.
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As far as I am aware Green Flag is no longer in existence, having been taken over by Direct Line and renamed. I was with Green Flag and was transferred automatically to DL .
If you insure with DL you also get a discount on DL recovery service. Another point worth considering is that Direct Line cover you in any car, ie if you're a passenger in another car, that is covered whereas some recovery services will only cover one specific car. If you're a 2 or more car family this is worth considering as one membership can also include a partner and their car for no extra cost.
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This is weird because I got a quote from Green Flag which was way highter than the DL one.
I think the DL quote I got covered 2 people and 2 cars, for the ludicrous sum of about £40. I still feel I must have missed something!
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I am now very embarrassed to admit that I got it wrong.
Just want to post it here in case anyone else was tempted by the £40 thing.
My very much better half checked my quotes tonight, and it appears that, unknown to me, my DL quote was for the absolute minimum cover rather than what I had thought it would be.
The cover we need, (number 3 I think) costs twice as much as I thought it did.
Just posting this to humiliate myself and prevent anyone else from thinking that I'd got a good deal!
HF
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Hiya...
My dad has paid for RAC cover for the whole family (4 people) for the last eight or nine years. It covers us for whatever car we happen to be in at the time, and also still covers me even though I don't live at home any more.
Up until this year it cost very little, but I went through a spate of locking my keys in the car with the spare one either at their house or in the glove compartment (don't ask!) so they had to come out to that. Luckily the last bloke taught me all the tricks of the trade so I can now break into my own car and vauxhall novas (though why I would want to...?). I think even though he's lost his no call out discount it is well less than £100 a year and with youngish daughters he says it gives him amazing peace of mind to know that there would be someone on their way to us if he wasn't available.
I can't really comment on response time as the main midlands RAC response centre is in Wolverhampton, so they are always with me in less than 10 minutes! When my sister was stuck on the M3 late at night she warned them she was on her own and nervous and they stayed on the line to her, I think, until the driver arrived (about 25 minutes).
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I took my driving lessons with BSM and passed last august, I got a years free basic RAC cover with them, came to renewal time last month and they offered a 10% discount for staying with them and another six quid off for signing up to pay yearly by direct debit.
It was my cheapest option and provides the cover i need to get me and my car home if something goes wrong.
I called them twice last year one battery problem one dead engine. very curteous and fairly quick (35 mins) as the dead engine happened on the indside lane of an underpass of the A3 at tolworth just before rush hour.
i did shop around and for me they were the cheapest but reccommend looking at other options especially the ones provided by insurance companies as these seem to be a fairly good deal from what i have seen
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Direct Line also have a no-callout discount. I'm with them but only because I got 'automatically' switched from Green Flag in the past (hmm... very peculiar, as others have noted, because GF still seem to operate as well) and I've never yet taken the time to study and compare all the alternatives.
Price and 'features' aside though, if I remember correctly, in the last survey done by Which? magazine, performance/satisfaction-wise the AA came out top, others were in the middle, and the RAC came a miserable bottom.
I think those might be the same positions as in their survey-before-that too.
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