I've just bought a 3 year old KTM 390 Duke and among other things will be organising breakdown and recovery insurance. It's nearly 20 years since I did this so was hoping for suggestions from practical experience. I used to use Green Flag but that was 20 years ago and things may have changed. I only recall using Green Flag for my cars 3 or 4 times and I don't remember ever calling them out for my motorbikes. Also can anyone suggest a tyre repair/inflation kit that's worth carrying?
I've got RAC personal cover, last time I had cause to use them I was sat on the side of the road for 5 hours, I really should change, but in todays world they all sub the work out to local breakdown crews so you're at their mercy for the most part* *I am as I only ever want recovering home, no breakdown guy is going to work on a bike with imperial fasteners and I don't want recovering to a garage as I do my own spanner work, YMMV. Puncture kit, Yeah I should look in that too, I'm not going to say I've never had a puncture in over 20 years, because, ya know, Murphey and all that
We paid for Rac national recovery and instead of recovering us, they took the car to a local recommended garage which wanted twice the price of a dealership for the same repairs, had to pay £90 for a car scan to get the car released back to the RAC who then recovered the car the after a long back and forth 300 miles. Screw the RAC
But was it the RAC or their cowboy subbies that bent you over.......... To be fair I've been with the AA, Green Flag, Autoaid, RAC and a few others and their all much of a muchness, my last back experience with the RAC netted me a refund for that years policy (god bless social media)
I still haven't organised anything. I used the GoCompare comparison site and although it comes up with low cost options every one of the companies quoting seems to have auto renewal and judging by the complaints for EVERY one of them on Trustpilot make it extremely difficult to cancel this. Also I appreciate that Trustpilot will have a lot of complaints about the service as many will complain but not necessarily compliment but the large number of complaints for poor or rip off service are disturbing and off putting Going direct to the AA, RAC, Green Flag websites raises the quote level from around £20-£30 pa to around £80-100 giving an indication why the auto renewal option is favoured. Not sure what to do now. I've ordered the Oxford Tyre Repair Kit and some additional generic CO2 canisters which I'd hope would normally have been for the only reason to use a breakdown service.
Autoaid - best kept secret of breakdown cover. £76 covers you for everything of any age (cars and bikes).
Thanks but mixed reviews on Trustpilot again, a lot of them relating to auto renewal. I can appreciate the service you receive from any of them is down to the local 'rescuer' but Customer Service seems to be a big failing of all of them.
Is auto-renewal a problem when it's a) the only service you'll need (because they covers cars and bikes) and b) they don't auto uplift their prices to crazy levels? With the AA etc they lure you in for the first year then jack the prices, Autoaid are still charging me £62.50 from years ago when I first joined.
I’ve always used the RAC, but used some of my Tesco club card points so get it at 1/3rd of the price. I’ve only needed to call them out once, they arrived in about an hour, diagnosed the issue, got me running (dead battery) and they advised to buy a new one elsewhere because it would be cheaper than from the RAC - nice guy.
