another dig at the AA - officialy the worst recovery company

[rollazuki]

Have had poor experiences with AA, so have been in Green Flag for about 6 years, and only had good things to say....until........

We broke down in Bradford, rear suspension arm cracked, they believed my diagnosis and sent a flat bed loader thingy. About 1 hour, all good so far, loaded car on set off home for Rotherham.


Were trundling along(fortunately sitting up front, not in the back of the 'crewcab' truck) when I notice the driver trying to fall asleep.
Well, I make chit-chat with this guy for the next to hours to keep the poor [!Expletive Deleted!] awake and find out lots about the way he is made to work.

Basically he is on call every one of his days off, and so can feasibly work thru 24 hours and get called out again. They dont relay any more, so if he gets called to Cornwall, its there and back, 1 man, 1 journey.
 To top all this off, when the truck is in operation, its apparently classed as an emergency vehicle and isnt tied to the tachograph, so the operators get away with this!!!!!!!!

It was an awkward 2 hours for me, but if Id had a long recovery, and not noticed, maybe fallen asleep with my family in the back of the truck, I dread to think what may have happened.

Keep alert if youre recovered, the driver might not!

Yes I did report this matter, Green Flag advised me they had recieved my response and were investigating, and Ive heard nothing since. Thats 1 year ago after xmas!

[Whitelandyman90]

I had a similar problem when I broke down and was kept waiting for 3 hours by the AA  :twisted:  :twisted:

But the best is yet to come ..... when the patrol eventually arrived it was from an independant breakdown company who had come 90 miles to answer the call  :shock: . The driver told me that they did more recoveries for the AA than the AA does themselves because they are so c*ap that they can't manage to get, and keep, enough staff to do the job themselves.

I reckon what some earlier post said about the company being run by the french purely for profit without any hint of customer service is about right.  

[H]

But in response to what H says if they were to listen more to the customer then they would have to spend out alot of extra money on training telephone staff to diagnose faults over the phone, cos i tell ya if you told half of them your gearbox was in pieces their response would be "whats a gearbox???".

Which again then pushes the costs up that we as a consumer have to pay as the training would cost a fortune!

I'm affriad thta they must have at least some training of this manor or at least a checklist of questions to ask to assitane if is repairsable or should be recovered as I have been asked some extremely relevent questions with regards to my breakdowns that would assitane if it was recoverable or not. What I would suggest is basic map reading skills is given as trainig as the last time despite giving them the numbers off the SOS phone box 50 yrds in front of me they still sent the flat bed to the wrong place.

H

[mud rookey]

Had the same problem some years ago with the AA (All Alone club) had to arrange my own recovery after sitting on the side of the road for 5 Hours in freezing weather now use green flag/direct line used them twice in the last 2 years and was recovered both times within 30 minutes of call how's that for service.