Last September, our car broke down on the A12 in Essex on our way back from our son’s birthday treat. We managed to pull on to a lane about 20 metres from the main road.
We rang the RAC for assistance at 7.30pm and received a text stating a wait of four and a half hours. We rang regularly to explain that we had two distressed children and were eventually told that we were being prioritised. However, successive text updates kept stating that we should wait another 30 minutes for an update. By midnight, there was still no sign of help.
We rang again, and were told that 4:30am was the earliest we could expect assistance. We complained again and were offered a hotel, but the RAC explained we would have to return to the car at 4:30am, which meant no one would get any sleep.
Our children were now extremely distressed, but the RAC was adamant that we didn’t have taxi cover. Finally, it relented and ordered a taxi to take the children and myself the 80 miles home while my partner remained with the car.
We were informed that a “trusted partner” was on its way, but it didn’t show up. At 3.24am, my partner called the “trusted partner”. It claimed it had driven the length of the lane but not found the car, and that it had called us but not got through, so the callout had been cancelled. There were no missed calls (turned out they’d got the number wrong) and no truck had passed down the lane.
My partner called the RAC, which told him the recovery driver had simultaneously claimed it had not found the car, and that it had found it unattended.
Eventually, an RAC patrol arrived at 5am, nearly 10 hours after we’d broken down. RAC has since offered us £100 but refused to admit its errors or apologise.
CT, Rickmansworth
Your horrible ordeal echoes the case of the 62-year-old woman who was forced to spend the night with strangers after the RAC left her in a country lane for 20 hours.
You were stranded on a lane miles from the nearest facilities with an expressway shooting past and a 10- and 14-year-old on board.
The original four-and-a-half-hour wait is unacceptable for a service that lures custom with promises of “peace of mind” and claims that it “normally” arrives within the hour; nine and a half is beyond belief.
And is the RAC contrite? Not a bit. “We did not leave the family stranded overnight,” it says tersely. “We immediately made it clear there would be a longer-than-normal wait and offered the family a hotel for the night, despite this not being part of the policy, but this was declined. We later paid for a taxi that took them 80 miles home.”
It didn’t respond when I pointed out you were only offered the hotel at midnight. It did, however, contact you and offer you an extra £200. In a cover letter, it finally admitted its service and its communications had not been up to standard, and agreed that there were discrepancies in the claims of its trusted partner.
You are not happy with the compensation, but unless you want to risk a small claim, which may award you less, you have run out of road.
Canny lobbying by the RAC and AA got breakdown services exempted from the remit of the Financial Ombudsman Service, which means you can complain about how breakdown cover was sold, but not how roadside assistance was carried out.
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