Message Forums

We are in the AA but luckily not had to use them while towing but a friend of mine has, said the service was good, so prompted us also to join.Someone on here will come along on  with there first hand experience before long, I stay with the AA because we have 3 cars they cover the driver whatever what you are driving at the time of breakdown, I hope! 

We had to call out the AA about two years ago when we visited Blackpool when I damaged one of the caravan side marker lights which short circuited the wiring to the caravan so had no rear lights working at all. The patrol man arrived within the hour, replaced the blown fuse, temporarily fixed the marker light to at least to get us home so the service I received was excellent in every way. I would have joined them again actually but the only reason why I didn't is because they don't have a policy to recover your car and caravan if detached so the policy is to recover the car and caravan if it's in tow. Basically, if you have your caravan pitched on a site and you go out for the day solo with the car then they will only recover the car so they will then charge per mile to recover the caravan which can be rather expensive if you are miles away from home. Because of this I joined the RAC via the Camping & Caravanning Club and took out their 'Arrival' cover which is supposed to cover a rescue of the caravan as well as the car providing the towcar has broken down within a 75 mile radius. However, we have recently been in this situation last weekend nearly 200 miles from home and the service we received from the RAC was absolutely diabolical to say the least. They were willing to leave us stranded even though the local dealer couldn't fix my car and totally refused us recovery. It's a lengthy story they appear to be clueless of this specific 'Arrival' policy and took over 22 hours to organise a recovery. I'm writing a serious complaint to the C&CC as the 'Arrival' cover can only be purchased by being a club member so it will be interesting to see what their response is on this. The RAC 'Arrival' cover is just guaranteed in writing but not in practice but if the AA had this type of cover I wouldn't hesitate to join them again merely on the grounds of their excellent service.

I had a completely different experiance with RAC Camping and Caravanning Club Arival.

We had issues with our ML270 refusing to change gear or worse putting itself into nuetral. We were recovered home from cambletown to cheshire admitedly we were towing a trailer tent. Called them out from campsite on the monday they were unable to diagnose the issue so they arranged for us to be picked up and taken home Thursday morning (9hrs) 

Can only say the service was excellant, saved £100 in diesel too