The RAC and the motorcyclist

[Agent Orange]

That's shocking...
I'm like Tramp...insured personal cover...me and wife...£80 for the year...any vehicle any age up to 3.5t...a bike, VE transporter and Ka...
Rescue My car..
Thankfully never used...never lend your compressor out again BoB...

[boboneleg]

BOB...always thought you carried a extra spare inner tube?

Anyway I've been with Jem for years never let me down always recovered within 2hrs and that was the ccm crap...car is same 2hrs max...I'm insured for breakdown not vehicle..

I had tools , tubes (front and rear) and tyre levers with me but as I explained I had given my tyre inflator to my mate earlier.

This was the state of my tyre after I'd ridden seven miles on it to get to Cirencester and some sort of civilisation , the twats from the RAC would never have found me where the blow out occured ...........

IMG_6448.JPG (145.4 KiB) Viewed 5432 times

and this was the state of my rim tape when I took the tyre off two days later ............

IMG_6458.JPG (133.43 KiB) Viewed 5432 times

[boboneleg]

That's shocking...
I'm like Tramp...insured personal cover...me and wife...£80 for the year...any vehicle any age up to 3.5t...a bike, VE transporter and Ka...
Rescue My car..
Thankfully never used...never lend your compressor out again BoB...

I've had personal cover with the RAC for me and my wife for over 20 years , I won't be renewing next year

[blue bus]

waited about 5 hours for RAC bike cut out on a dark lane one Friday tea time in winter, so phoned on the monday ask to speak to somebody about complaining dont know who i spoke to but was not that bothered, a few days later got two letters telling me it was because they were busy it was just a standard letter just dear customer very poor, Couple of weeks after i bought a new RE interceptor that cut out dead so phoned there recovery that comes with the bike that was another 4h 55min wait complained to them they sent me 6 bottles of wine

[Snaf MKII]

Similar experience from me except the initial attendance was within an hour but then the recovery operation was a litany of missed attendance times followed by leaving me at the side of the road at 10pm after refusing to take me to the garage where I'd arranged a customer vehicle. The recovery contractor then proceeded to lose my vehicle for six days and had started and driven it around their yard despite it having an engine problem which caused further problems. The RAC were not even slightly interested and there is no ombudsmen system or third party organisation to which to lodge a complaint with, they eventually sent me a random £50 cheque without any explanation. Needless to say, I've not renewed and after 40 years of continuous membership. It's a shame as I've had amazing service from them previously apart from once when they had an admin cockup leaving us stranded on a Sunday evening that couldn't be resolved until Monday morning. The next morning they bent over backwards to make us happy, immediately paid me the bill I'd paid from the recovery company and gave us a years free family and European cover.

[Tramp]

Yup I hate to say it but thank fuck for the Internet and Facebook groups...a quick post or WhatsApp normally has someone comjng to a stranded riders help in europe be it road or offroad..

It a sorry story when a passing motorist dosent stop to help another stranded human being...

At least your safe home Bob...has your mate returned the compressor yet lol...tkme for mouses eh?

[Scott_rider]

I've been recovered by CN twice.
The first time was in Innsbruck, Austria and the recovery vehicle arrived within about 1.5 hours - which I was impressed with seeing as I had to call a UK number and they had to relay my position to the Austrian breakdown service that they use.


After that, there was a catalogue of errors getting me back to the UK without my bike - but they got me home in the end.

The second time was in Oxford and the recovery vehicle arrived within 45 minutes - which again I was impressed with.


In fact it was so quick that I was still in McDonalds ordering a quarter pounder with cheese when I saw the flat bed through the window. On the way home, the recovery driver said that he was about 20 miles away when he got the call and had it been 5 minutes later he would have been on his way to Swindon and wouldn't have been able to get back to Oxford for at least 4 hours.

[mark vb]

My one and only experience with RAC was good.
The cover came free when I bought my Tenere 660. The reg/reg packed up and left me with a flat battery at a filling station. Took them a hour or so to arrive. They took me home on a flat bed and the next day came to pick up the bike and took it to the dealer for warranty repair. Maybe I was just lucky, judging by the previous posts.

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

It's literally pot luck...if there's an untasked van near you (and they have to cover big areas) they will deal with you quickly. If not...well, you have to wait. No fault of the person in the van.

A few years (decades!) back my then-wife broke down on a dark evening abut 40 miles from home. The AA call centre lady asked her if she was on her own.

She replied that she had her dog with her, and needed to get the dog to the vet to have stitches out.

The AA woman then de-prioritised her as she wasn't a 'lone woman'! (Their advertising at the time made much of the fact that lone women would be prioritised and she had chosen the AA over others because of this).

I finished work and went out and rescued her. We cancelled the call for help.

The next day we called to cancel our cover and get a full refund, only to be told that they didn't give refunds no matter how bad their service was because they needed the money to maintain their level of service for members. In the 'small print' apparently.

Oh, right...so that's OK then.

For all modern cars are supposedly reliable, only a single-figure % now have a spare wheel. My stepdaughter unwittingly drove through some mud left in the road where a recycling truck had tipped over, and slashed a tyre sidewall on her new car on broken glass that the council had left in the road. What looked like the spare wheel well actually held a warning triangle and a can of tyre sealant...luckily her husband was at home and could come and rescue her. But how many AA/RAC/Greenflag calouts are now for these utterly avoidable tyre failures?

[DavidS]

My caveat to your last bit Richard is who on earth would want to try and change an offside wheel these days without waiting for someone with a big truck and flashing lights?
I agree with the lack of even a spacesaver wheel as being ridiculous.