The shambles that the RAC has become - A warning.
Discussion
Long post - sorry
Not only am I tired of their Mickey take renewal quotes (typically 200% of what I end up paying), but see below for a summary of the service I received when I broke down on Saturday 9th of March.
At 8:30 I called the breakdown line from a service station I'd just about managed to get to. as the alternator had died on my car. They promised a patrol would be with me by 10:30. Just after 10:30 I called again and was kept on hold for 13 mins. They then said they would send a flat bed without a patrol getting to me first after I assured them the car was very unlikely to be fixable by a mobile patrol.
About 20 mins later I received a text from the recovery firm the RAC had contracted the job to. ETA 15:15!!
I phoned them to see if any improvement on the timing was possible. Not only was I told "if that wasn’t good enough call the RAC", but that they intended to take me to Crewe (from near JCT 16 of the M6). Fat lot of good that would have been, when I was trying to get home to the Surrey / Hampshire border, so I called the RAC again. It took them 61 mins to answer this time and during my wait, the recovery firm texted again to say they would now recover the car to my mechanic, but their ETA was now 20:30!!!
When I finally got through to the RAC they were very apologetic, sorted a hire car and a cab to the car hire depot, but it was still 14:30 (6 hours after my initial call) that someone got to me. The car keys were left with the service station and the car was to be collected at 21:00 that night.
For the next 4 days I suffered broken promises and outright lies. I made repeated calls to the RAC; was kept on hold in excess of 45 minutes 3 times; I was assured of delivery slots for my car that were repeatedly missed and it took the RAC until Wednesday 14th March to finally get my car recovered to my mechanic.
The RAC also forgot to arrange collection of the hire car despite my request to pick it up Sunday if possible, but early Monday if not, so my wife wasted all day Monday 12th (and Tuesday 13th but that was down to Europcar) waiting in for collection..
I wrote to the Chief Exec on Sunday 10th March and again on the 17th regarding the follow up "service".
A full 11 days after I wrote to the RAC I got an email back as below.
Dear Mr Tims,
Thank you for your e-mail addressed to Dave Hobday, RAC CEO. As Customer Care Officer to the RAC Board, Dave has asked me to investigate your concerns and respond to you on his behalf. Dave takes a personal interest in our members’ experience of our service and I will be keeping him informed of the outcome.
The experience you have described is extremely disappointing and not to the normal RAC standard and I have commenced an investigation into what happened. I will update you with progress as soon as I have further information, but certainly by 28 March 2018. I attach a copy of Our Complaints Procedure.
Kind regards,
(Name withheld by me)
On receipt I asked the Customer Care Officer if she was responding also to my 2nd email & offered to forward it.
She replied quickly to say
Mr Tims,
No need, I’ve just tracked it down and I have it now.
Apologies for the delay in our response, but I shall be back in touch with you in due course.
On 27th March I got the following email
Dear Mr Tims,
I write in regards to your complaint, and further to my previous correspondence. Thank you for your patience whilst I have looked into your concerns.
Firstly, I’m really sorry that your experience fell well below the standards RAC normally set. It is the case that I will be upholding your complaint, and I’m going to try and provide some explanations behind what went wrong.
Whilst I don’t wish to make excuses, I want to just start by setting out some context and reasoning as to why things were as they were. In the previous weeks, we’d been the busiest we’d been in over ten years, due to the adverse weather conditions – the storm combined with the “Beast from the East”. At one point we took over thirty thousand calls in two days, and we were logging a new breakdown onto our systems every one second for a sustained period.
Now whilst the weather had for the most part cleared, the after-effects lingered for RAC for a much longer time than one might expect. The reasons for this are vast and complex, but in short, a lot of jobs were deferred, vehicles were taken into storage temporarily, and lots of members called for assistance in the days afterwards, having not used their cars during this time. The over-arching reason for your experience comes down to the severe volumes we were still dealing with.
However, this doesn’t excuse some of the clear mistakes that were made in the handling of your breakdown experience.
Right from the start, I can confirm that Egerton’s did inform us that they were not going to meet the ninety minute ETA they’d given us, but, crucially, we never put in a call to you to let you know. The reason for this again is clear, but it doesn’t make what happened acceptable. But ultimately, the high call volumes that meant you suffered some severe queues, also meant that the usual processes and standards we have in place slipped – namely, proactive update calls.
Egerton’s have also informed me that the reason for the destination change was because of how busy they were too - they had to carry out the recovery in stages. I’m also sorry that they had to push back the final delivery date. I am disappointed to confirm though that they indeed didn’t call you when they collected the vehicle as you asked in your note – they’ve confirmed they didn’t because we didn’t make a specific request they did so. I would have liked to have seen them act based upon your note alone – I agree it was clear enough.
Finally, I can see also that whilst we arranged a hire car for you, the further information about the collection date was not passed to Europcar.
I can only reiterate my apologies for your experience on this occasion. I don’t wish for a lot of this to come across as excuses, but I have tried my best to give an explanation and some reasoning behind why things happened as they did.
What I’d like to stress, is that as a business we’re fully and completely aware of our failures during this recent busy period. Whilst to a degree the extreme weather was outside of our control, lots of lessons have nevertheless been learnt about how we handled it. There’s already been a range of internal operational changes, as well as process-based improvements to increase our efficiency. We’ve also made some significant financial investments, and I personally have ensured to feed back to our control centre regarding the individual mistakes and errors that have been made.
Furthermore, as a gesture of goodwill, I have also arranged for a full refund of the amount you have paid for your policy for the year, amounting to £124.99. This means that you won’t have paid for the service you received on this occasion, or indeed for your other callouts in this policy period. Please allow up to ten days for the cheque to arrive.
I trust this meets with your approval. If you do wish to discuss this any further with me, then by all means, please get in touch directly. May I also take this opportunity to thank you for your membership over the years – it is very much appreciated.
Kind regards,
By return, I replied:
Dear XXXX
I appreciate the gesture, but I don't feel that it comes even remotely near appropriate compensation for the inconvenience and stress you caused.
If we look at phone call time alone, I was on the phone to either you or Egertons for circa 5 hours between 9th & the 14th of March, I spent over 6 hours waiting to be recovered (eventually picked up by a Taxi) and my wife had 2 days of waiting in for the hire car to be collected.
We value our time much more highly than £125.00
I hope to receive a more appropriate settlement offer in reasonably short order.
The next day I received this reply:
Dear Mr Tims,
Thank you for your e-mail.
I’m sorry that you’re unhappy with my offer.
I do feel a full refund of your premiums is a fair and reasonable offer. Whilst I fully acknowledge your experience, we do also need to consider that from a terms and conditions perspective, we don’t guarantee our attendance times, especially in the circumstances of extreme weather.
As such, I’m satisfied a full policy refund is appropriate, and it will remain my final offer.
I would not ever retract the offer of the refund, so that is still making its way to you. Further to that however, I’m sorry that I could not more satisfactorily resolve your concerns.
I’m happy to remain as a point of contact if you need anything else, so don’t hesitate to get in touch if there’s anything you need.
So today (2nd April), after a couple of days to consider, I responded to say:
Dear XXXX
I acknowledge your stance and I’m not going to demean myself by requesting that you reconsider.
I am still considering taking legal action, but I am most certainly going to post an accurate account of the whole sorry affair on every possible social media outlet I can. Additionally I have friends in motoring journalism and am a long term subscriber to 3 monthly motoring magazines.
I am determined to make sure as many people get to hear what a complete shower your organisation has become. I see it as my responsibility.
Just to clarify, I don't expect, or wish to receive a response.
I don't see how further discourse would be productive.
Regards
I don't believe my experience was even that exceptional from the reaction to the social media posts I've already made and for most of my membership of the RAC since 2003 service has generally been pretty good. It seems that the deterioration has happened relatively recently.
Andy Tims
02.04.18
Not only am I tired of their Mickey take renewal quotes (typically 200% of what I end up paying), but see below for a summary of the service I received when I broke down on Saturday 9th of March.
At 8:30 I called the breakdown line from a service station I'd just about managed to get to. as the alternator had died on my car. They promised a patrol would be with me by 10:30. Just after 10:30 I called again and was kept on hold for 13 mins. They then said they would send a flat bed without a patrol getting to me first after I assured them the car was very unlikely to be fixable by a mobile patrol.
About 20 mins later I received a text from the recovery firm the RAC had contracted the job to. ETA 15:15!!
I phoned them to see if any improvement on the timing was possible. Not only was I told "if that wasn’t good enough call the RAC", but that they intended to take me to Crewe (from near JCT 16 of the M6). Fat lot of good that would have been, when I was trying to get home to the Surrey / Hampshire border, so I called the RAC again. It took them 61 mins to answer this time and during my wait, the recovery firm texted again to say they would now recover the car to my mechanic, but their ETA was now 20:30!!!
When I finally got through to the RAC they were very apologetic, sorted a hire car and a cab to the car hire depot, but it was still 14:30 (6 hours after my initial call) that someone got to me. The car keys were left with the service station and the car was to be collected at 21:00 that night.
For the next 4 days I suffered broken promises and outright lies. I made repeated calls to the RAC; was kept on hold in excess of 45 minutes 3 times; I was assured of delivery slots for my car that were repeatedly missed and it took the RAC until Wednesday 14th March to finally get my car recovered to my mechanic.
The RAC also forgot to arrange collection of the hire car despite my request to pick it up Sunday if possible, but early Monday if not, so my wife wasted all day Monday 12th (and Tuesday 13th but that was down to Europcar) waiting in for collection..
I wrote to the Chief Exec on Sunday 10th March and again on the 17th regarding the follow up "service".
A full 11 days after I wrote to the RAC I got an email back as below.
Dear Mr Tims,
Thank you for your e-mail addressed to Dave Hobday, RAC CEO. As Customer Care Officer to the RAC Board, Dave has asked me to investigate your concerns and respond to you on his behalf. Dave takes a personal interest in our members’ experience of our service and I will be keeping him informed of the outcome.
The experience you have described is extremely disappointing and not to the normal RAC standard and I have commenced an investigation into what happened. I will update you with progress as soon as I have further information, but certainly by 28 March 2018. I attach a copy of Our Complaints Procedure.
Kind regards,
(Name withheld by me)
On receipt I asked the Customer Care Officer if she was responding also to my 2nd email & offered to forward it.
She replied quickly to say
Mr Tims,
No need, I’ve just tracked it down and I have it now.
Apologies for the delay in our response, but I shall be back in touch with you in due course.
On 27th March I got the following email
Dear Mr Tims,
I write in regards to your complaint, and further to my previous correspondence. Thank you for your patience whilst I have looked into your concerns.
Firstly, I’m really sorry that your experience fell well below the standards RAC normally set. It is the case that I will be upholding your complaint, and I’m going to try and provide some explanations behind what went wrong.
Whilst I don’t wish to make excuses, I want to just start by setting out some context and reasoning as to why things were as they were. In the previous weeks, we’d been the busiest we’d been in over ten years, due to the adverse weather conditions – the storm combined with the “Beast from the East”. At one point we took over thirty thousand calls in two days, and we were logging a new breakdown onto our systems every one second for a sustained period.
Now whilst the weather had for the most part cleared, the after-effects lingered for RAC for a much longer time than one might expect. The reasons for this are vast and complex, but in short, a lot of jobs were deferred, vehicles were taken into storage temporarily, and lots of members called for assistance in the days afterwards, having not used their cars during this time. The over-arching reason for your experience comes down to the severe volumes we were still dealing with.
However, this doesn’t excuse some of the clear mistakes that were made in the handling of your breakdown experience.
Right from the start, I can confirm that Egerton’s did inform us that they were not going to meet the ninety minute ETA they’d given us, but, crucially, we never put in a call to you to let you know. The reason for this again is clear, but it doesn’t make what happened acceptable. But ultimately, the high call volumes that meant you suffered some severe queues, also meant that the usual processes and standards we have in place slipped – namely, proactive update calls.
Egerton’s have also informed me that the reason for the destination change was because of how busy they were too - they had to carry out the recovery in stages. I’m also sorry that they had to push back the final delivery date. I am disappointed to confirm though that they indeed didn’t call you when they collected the vehicle as you asked in your note – they’ve confirmed they didn’t because we didn’t make a specific request they did so. I would have liked to have seen them act based upon your note alone – I agree it was clear enough.
Finally, I can see also that whilst we arranged a hire car for you, the further information about the collection date was not passed to Europcar.
I can only reiterate my apologies for your experience on this occasion. I don’t wish for a lot of this to come across as excuses, but I have tried my best to give an explanation and some reasoning behind why things happened as they did.
What I’d like to stress, is that as a business we’re fully and completely aware of our failures during this recent busy period. Whilst to a degree the extreme weather was outside of our control, lots of lessons have nevertheless been learnt about how we handled it. There’s already been a range of internal operational changes, as well as process-based improvements to increase our efficiency. We’ve also made some significant financial investments, and I personally have ensured to feed back to our control centre regarding the individual mistakes and errors that have been made.
Furthermore, as a gesture of goodwill, I have also arranged for a full refund of the amount you have paid for your policy for the year, amounting to £124.99. This means that you won’t have paid for the service you received on this occasion, or indeed for your other callouts in this policy period. Please allow up to ten days for the cheque to arrive.
I trust this meets with your approval. If you do wish to discuss this any further with me, then by all means, please get in touch directly. May I also take this opportunity to thank you for your membership over the years – it is very much appreciated.
Kind regards,
By return, I replied:
Dear XXXX
I appreciate the gesture, but I don't feel that it comes even remotely near appropriate compensation for the inconvenience and stress you caused.
If we look at phone call time alone, I was on the phone to either you or Egertons for circa 5 hours between 9th & the 14th of March, I spent over 6 hours waiting to be recovered (eventually picked up by a Taxi) and my wife had 2 days of waiting in for the hire car to be collected.
We value our time much more highly than £125.00
I hope to receive a more appropriate settlement offer in reasonably short order.
The next day I received this reply:
Dear Mr Tims,
Thank you for your e-mail.
I’m sorry that you’re unhappy with my offer.
I do feel a full refund of your premiums is a fair and reasonable offer. Whilst I fully acknowledge your experience, we do also need to consider that from a terms and conditions perspective, we don’t guarantee our attendance times, especially in the circumstances of extreme weather.
As such, I’m satisfied a full policy refund is appropriate, and it will remain my final offer.
I would not ever retract the offer of the refund, so that is still making its way to you. Further to that however, I’m sorry that I could not more satisfactorily resolve your concerns.
I’m happy to remain as a point of contact if you need anything else, so don’t hesitate to get in touch if there’s anything you need.
So today (2nd April), after a couple of days to consider, I responded to say:
Dear XXXX
I acknowledge your stance and I’m not going to demean myself by requesting that you reconsider.
I am still considering taking legal action, but I am most certainly going to post an accurate account of the whole sorry affair on every possible social media outlet I can. Additionally I have friends in motoring journalism and am a long term subscriber to 3 monthly motoring magazines.
I am determined to make sure as many people get to hear what a complete shower your organisation has become. I see it as my responsibility.
Just to clarify, I don't expect, or wish to receive a response.
I don't see how further discourse would be productive.
Regards
I don't believe my experience was even that exceptional from the reaction to the social media posts I've already made and for most of my membership of the RAC since 2003 service has generally been pretty good. It seems that the deterioration has happened relatively recently.
Andy Tims
02.04.18
They are an utter shambles. On Saturday at 2.45pm my Nissan Navara decided to throw all the water out of the engine and as a result I needed to call Nissan European assistance. They use the RAC for all breakdowns.
The call was eventually answered where upon I explained the situation. A patrol was being urgently despatched and would be with me within 90 mins. They weren't.
So long story short they said the same to me that they would despatch a truck to me and deliver car home as dealer is closed until Tuesday which was fair enough.
After several more calls an independent company collected me who had been only contracted an hour previous. I live 11 miles from where it broke down and it took over 6 hours to get home.
They kept ringing me and saying they were near but somehow not near enough. Also I am supposed to get a hire car, but guess what unless I want to drive to an Airport there are none locally available until Tuesday.
So tomorrow they have to collect truck, not holding much hope there, arrange a car and explain why this simple task was screwed up. Had they have said it would be 6 hours I would have got a cab home and sat in the warm and gone back when they were there.
I understand it was a bank holiday and they would be busy but they clearly had no plans to cope.
The call was eventually answered where upon I explained the situation. A patrol was being urgently despatched and would be with me within 90 mins. They weren't.
So long story short they said the same to me that they would despatch a truck to me and deliver car home as dealer is closed until Tuesday which was fair enough.
After several more calls an independent company collected me who had been only contracted an hour previous. I live 11 miles from where it broke down and it took over 6 hours to get home.
They kept ringing me and saying they were near but somehow not near enough. Also I am supposed to get a hire car, but guess what unless I want to drive to an Airport there are none locally available until Tuesday.
So tomorrow they have to collect truck, not holding much hope there, arrange a car and explain why this simple task was screwed up. Had they have said it would be 6 hours I would have got a cab home and sat in the warm and gone back when they were there.
I understand it was a bank holiday and they would be busy but they clearly had no plans to cope.
They’re refunding what you paid for the membership and gave what looks like a full and detailed apology admitting where they’d fallen short.
What compo do you think is warranted beyond that? Genuinely, I’ve no idea what you’re looking for here and I doubt they do either. Unquestionably a s
t experience and terrible service but what’s your endgame?
Got to say though, when you threw in the line about being a long term subscriber to three motoring magazines I’m surprised they didn’t throw in the towel there and then and give you a few thousand quid. Serious badass territory
What compo do you think is warranted beyond that? Genuinely, I’ve no idea what you’re looking for here and I doubt they do either. Unquestionably a s
t experience and terrible service but what’s your endgame?Got to say though, when you threw in the line about being a long term subscriber to three motoring magazines I’m surprised they didn’t throw in the towel there and then and give you a few thousand quid. Serious badass territory
Supply and demand I guess, it's a difficult balance.
All those extra patrols needed in order to offer an acceptable service during poor weather would be sat around twiddling their thumbs at other times.
For every poor sod stranded for hours when it snows is offset by another who had a patrol turn up straight away in the summer.
andy tims said:
I am still considering taking legal action, but I am most certainly going to post an accurate account of the whole sorry affair on every possible social media outlet I can. Additionally I have friends in motoring journalism and am a long term subscriber to 3 monthly motoring magazines.
I can see this becoming one of those PH "things"
I always think you lose a little of any moral high ground when you veer off into comments about how "I have friends in motoring journalism" and how you are "a long term subscriber to 3 monthly motoring magazines".
They've given you a refund and as much as I get why you may not like it I think they've been pretty frank that they fked up and why they fked up.
I'm struggling to see what more they could do unless basically simply giving you money makes it better?
They've given you a refund and as much as I get why you may not like it I think they've been pretty frank that they f
ked up and why they fked up.I'm struggling to see what more they could do unless basically simply giving you money makes it better?
andy tims said:
Long post - sorry
Not only am I tired of their Mickey take renewal quotes (typically 200% of what I end up paying), but see below for a summary of the service I received when I broke down on Saturday 9th of March.
At 8:30 I called the breakdown line from a service station I'd just about managed to get to. as the alternator had died on my car. They promised a patrol would be with me by 10:30. Just after 10:30 I called again and was kept on hold for 13 mins. They then said they would send a flat bed without a patrol getting to me first after I assured them the car was very unlikely to be fixable by a mobile patrol.
About 20 mins later I received a text from the recovery firm the RAC had contracted the job to. ETA 15:15!!
I phoned them to see if any improvement on the timing was possible. Not only was I told "if that wasn’t good enough call the RAC", but that they intended to take me to Crewe (from near JCT 16 of the M6). Fat lot of good that would have been, when I was trying to get home to the Surrey / Hampshire border, so I called the RAC again. It took them 61 mins to answer this time and during my wait, the recovery firm texted again to say they would now recover the car to my mechanic, but their ETA was now 20:30!!!
When I finally got through to the RAC they were very apologetic, sorted a hire car and a cab to the car hire depot, but it was still 14:30 (6 hours after my initial call) that someone got to me. The car keys were left with the service station and the car was to be collected at 21:00 that night.
For the next 4 days I suffered broken promises and outright lies. I made repeated calls to the RAC; was kept on hold in excess of 45 minutes 3 times; I was assured of delivery slots for my car that were repeatedly missed and it took the RAC until Wednesday 14th March to finally get my car recovered to my mechanic.
The RAC also forgot to arrange collection of the hire car despite my request to pick it up Sunday if possible, but early Monday if not, so my wife wasted all day Monday 12th (and Tuesday 13th but that was down to Europcar) waiting in for collection..
I wrote to the Chief Exec on Sunday 10th March and again on the 17th regarding the follow up "service".
A full 11 days after I wrote to the RAC I got an email back as below.
Dear Mr Tims,
Thank you for your e-mail addressed to Dave Hobday, RAC CEO. As Customer Care Officer to the RAC Board, Dave has asked me to investigate your concerns and respond to you on his behalf. Dave takes a personal interest in our members’ experience of our service and I will be keeping him informed of the outcome.
The experience you have described is extremely disappointing and not to the normal RAC standard and I have commenced an investigation into what happened. I will update you with progress as soon as I have further information, but certainly by 28 March 2018. I attach a copy of Our Complaints Procedure.
Kind regards,
(Name withheld by me)
On receipt I asked the Customer Care Officer if she was responding also to my 2nd email & offered to forward it.
She replied quickly to say
Mr Tims,
No need, I’ve just tracked it down and I have it now.
Apologies for the delay in our response, but I shall be back in touch with you in due course.
On 27th March I got the following email
Dear Mr Tims,
I write in regards to your complaint, and further to my previous correspondence. Thank you for your patience whilst I have looked into your concerns.
Firstly, I’m really sorry that your experience fell well below the standards RAC normally set. It is the case that I will be upholding your complaint, and I’m going to try and provide some explanations behind what went wrong.
Whilst I don’t wish to make excuses, I want to just start by setting out some context and reasoning as to why things were as they were. In the previous weeks, we’d been the busiest we’d been in over ten years, due to the adverse weather conditions – the storm combined with the “Beast from the East”. At one point we took over thirty thousand calls in two days, and we were logging a new breakdown onto our systems every one second for a sustained period.
Now whilst the weather had for the most part cleared, the after-effects lingered for RAC for a much longer time than one might expect. The reasons for this are vast and complex, but in short, a lot of jobs were deferred, vehicles were taken into storage temporarily, and lots of members called for assistance in the days afterwards, having not used their cars during this time. The over-arching reason for your experience comes down to the severe volumes we were still dealing with.
However, this doesn’t excuse some of the clear mistakes that were made in the handling of your breakdown experience.
Right from the start, I can confirm that Egerton’s did inform us that they were not going to meet the ninety minute ETA they’d given us, but, crucially, we never put in a call to you to let you know. The reason for this again is clear, but it doesn’t make what happened acceptable. But ultimately, the high call volumes that meant you suffered some severe queues, also meant that the usual processes and standards we have in place slipped – namely, proactive update calls.
Egerton’s have also informed me that the reason for the destination change was because of how busy they were too - they had to carry out the recovery in stages. I’m also sorry that they had to push back the final delivery date. I am disappointed to confirm though that they indeed didn’t call you when they collected the vehicle as you asked in your note – they’ve confirmed they didn’t because we didn’t make a specific request they did so. I would have liked to have seen them act based upon your note alone – I agree it was clear enough.
Finally, I can see also that whilst we arranged a hire car for you, the further information about the collection date was not passed to Europcar.
I can only reiterate my apologies for your experience on this occasion. I don’t wish for a lot of this to come across as excuses, but I have tried my best to give an explanation and some reasoning behind why things happened as they did.
What I’d like to stress, is that as a business we’re fully and completely aware of our failures during this recent busy period. Whilst to a degree the extreme weather was outside of our control, lots of lessons have nevertheless been learnt about how we handled it. There’s already been a range of internal operational changes, as well as process-based improvements to increase our efficiency. We’ve also made some significant financial investments, and I personally have ensured to feed back to our control centre regarding the individual mistakes and errors that have been made.
Furthermore, as a gesture of goodwill, I have also arranged for a full refund of the amount you have paid for your policy for the year, amounting to £124.99. This means that you won’t have paid for the service you received on this occasion, or indeed for your other callouts in this policy period. Please allow up to ten days for the cheque to arrive.
I trust this meets with your approval. If you do wish to discuss this any further with me, then by all means, please get in touch directly. May I also take this opportunity to thank you for your membership over the years – it is very much appreciated.
Kind regards,
By return, I replied:
Dear XXXX
I appreciate the gesture, but I don't feel that it comes even remotely near appropriate compensation for the inconvenience and stress you caused.
If we look at phone call time alone, I was on the phone to either you or Egertons for circa 5 hours between 9th & the 14th of March, I spent over 6 hours waiting to be recovered (eventually picked up by a Taxi) and my wife had 2 days of waiting in for the hire car to be collected.
We value our time much more highly than £125.00
I hope to receive a more appropriate settlement offer in reasonably short order.
The next day I received this reply:
Dear Mr Tims,
Thank you for your e-mail.
I’m sorry that you’re unhappy with my offer.
I do feel a full refund of your premiums is a fair and reasonable offer. Whilst I fully acknowledge your experience, we do also need to consider that from a terms and conditions perspective, we don’t guarantee our attendance times, especially in the circumstances of extreme weather.
As such, I’m satisfied a full policy refund is appropriate, and it will remain my final offer.
I would not ever retract the offer of the refund, so that is still making its way to you. Further to that however, I’m sorry that I could not more satisfactorily resolve your concerns.
I’m happy to remain as a point of contact if you need anything else, so don’t hesitate to get in touch if there’s anything you need.
So today (2nd April), after a couple of days to consider, I responded to say:
Dear XXXX
I acknowledge your stance and I’m not going to demean myself by requesting that you reconsider.
I am still considering taking legal action, but I am most certainly going to post an accurate account of the whole sorry affair on every possible social media outlet I can. Additionally I have friends in motoring journalism and am a long term subscriber to 3 monthly motoring magazines.
I am determined to make sure as many people get to hear what a complete shower your organisation has become. I see it as my responsibility.
Just to clarify, I don't expect, or wish to receive a response.
I don't see how further discourse would be productive.
Regards
I don't believe my experience was even that exceptional from the reaction to the social media posts I've already made and for most of my membership of the RAC since 2003 service has generally been pretty good. It seems that the deterioration has happened relatively recently.
Andy Tims
02.04.18
I suspect you will gain no sympathy due to the compensation issue however quoted as I don't think this will go your way and fully expect the OP to be deleted.Not only am I tired of their Mickey take renewal quotes (typically 200% of what I end up paying), but see below for a summary of the service I received when I broke down on Saturday 9th of March.
At 8:30 I called the breakdown line from a service station I'd just about managed to get to. as the alternator had died on my car. They promised a patrol would be with me by 10:30. Just after 10:30 I called again and was kept on hold for 13 mins. They then said they would send a flat bed without a patrol getting to me first after I assured them the car was very unlikely to be fixable by a mobile patrol.
About 20 mins later I received a text from the recovery firm the RAC had contracted the job to. ETA 15:15!!
I phoned them to see if any improvement on the timing was possible. Not only was I told "if that wasn’t good enough call the RAC", but that they intended to take me to Crewe (from near JCT 16 of the M6). Fat lot of good that would have been, when I was trying to get home to the Surrey / Hampshire border, so I called the RAC again. It took them 61 mins to answer this time and during my wait, the recovery firm texted again to say they would now recover the car to my mechanic, but their ETA was now 20:30!!!
When I finally got through to the RAC they were very apologetic, sorted a hire car and a cab to the car hire depot, but it was still 14:30 (6 hours after my initial call) that someone got to me. The car keys were left with the service station and the car was to be collected at 21:00 that night.
For the next 4 days I suffered broken promises and outright lies. I made repeated calls to the RAC; was kept on hold in excess of 45 minutes 3 times; I was assured of delivery slots for my car that were repeatedly missed and it took the RAC until Wednesday 14th March to finally get my car recovered to my mechanic.
The RAC also forgot to arrange collection of the hire car despite my request to pick it up Sunday if possible, but early Monday if not, so my wife wasted all day Monday 12th (and Tuesday 13th but that was down to Europcar) waiting in for collection..
I wrote to the Chief Exec on Sunday 10th March and again on the 17th regarding the follow up "service".
A full 11 days after I wrote to the RAC I got an email back as below.
Dear Mr Tims,
Thank you for your e-mail addressed to Dave Hobday, RAC CEO. As Customer Care Officer to the RAC Board, Dave has asked me to investigate your concerns and respond to you on his behalf. Dave takes a personal interest in our members’ experience of our service and I will be keeping him informed of the outcome.
The experience you have described is extremely disappointing and not to the normal RAC standard and I have commenced an investigation into what happened. I will update you with progress as soon as I have further information, but certainly by 28 March 2018. I attach a copy of Our Complaints Procedure.
Kind regards,
(Name withheld by me)
On receipt I asked the Customer Care Officer if she was responding also to my 2nd email & offered to forward it.
She replied quickly to say
Mr Tims,
No need, I’ve just tracked it down and I have it now.
Apologies for the delay in our response, but I shall be back in touch with you in due course.
On 27th March I got the following email
Dear Mr Tims,
I write in regards to your complaint, and further to my previous correspondence. Thank you for your patience whilst I have looked into your concerns.
Firstly, I’m really sorry that your experience fell well below the standards RAC normally set. It is the case that I will be upholding your complaint, and I’m going to try and provide some explanations behind what went wrong.
Whilst I don’t wish to make excuses, I want to just start by setting out some context and reasoning as to why things were as they were. In the previous weeks, we’d been the busiest we’d been in over ten years, due to the adverse weather conditions – the storm combined with the “Beast from the East”. At one point we took over thirty thousand calls in two days, and we were logging a new breakdown onto our systems every one second for a sustained period.
Now whilst the weather had for the most part cleared, the after-effects lingered for RAC for a much longer time than one might expect. The reasons for this are vast and complex, but in short, a lot of jobs were deferred, vehicles were taken into storage temporarily, and lots of members called for assistance in the days afterwards, having not used their cars during this time. The over-arching reason for your experience comes down to the severe volumes we were still dealing with.
However, this doesn’t excuse some of the clear mistakes that were made in the handling of your breakdown experience.
Right from the start, I can confirm that Egerton’s did inform us that they were not going to meet the ninety minute ETA they’d given us, but, crucially, we never put in a call to you to let you know. The reason for this again is clear, but it doesn’t make what happened acceptable. But ultimately, the high call volumes that meant you suffered some severe queues, also meant that the usual processes and standards we have in place slipped – namely, proactive update calls.
Egerton’s have also informed me that the reason for the destination change was because of how busy they were too - they had to carry out the recovery in stages. I’m also sorry that they had to push back the final delivery date. I am disappointed to confirm though that they indeed didn’t call you when they collected the vehicle as you asked in your note – they’ve confirmed they didn’t because we didn’t make a specific request they did so. I would have liked to have seen them act based upon your note alone – I agree it was clear enough.
Finally, I can see also that whilst we arranged a hire car for you, the further information about the collection date was not passed to Europcar.
I can only reiterate my apologies for your experience on this occasion. I don’t wish for a lot of this to come across as excuses, but I have tried my best to give an explanation and some reasoning behind why things happened as they did.
What I’d like to stress, is that as a business we’re fully and completely aware of our failures during this recent busy period. Whilst to a degree the extreme weather was outside of our control, lots of lessons have nevertheless been learnt about how we handled it. There’s already been a range of internal operational changes, as well as process-based improvements to increase our efficiency. We’ve also made some significant financial investments, and I personally have ensured to feed back to our control centre regarding the individual mistakes and errors that have been made.
Furthermore, as a gesture of goodwill, I have also arranged for a full refund of the amount you have paid for your policy for the year, amounting to £124.99. This means that you won’t have paid for the service you received on this occasion, or indeed for your other callouts in this policy period. Please allow up to ten days for the cheque to arrive.
I trust this meets with your approval. If you do wish to discuss this any further with me, then by all means, please get in touch directly. May I also take this opportunity to thank you for your membership over the years – it is very much appreciated.
Kind regards,
By return, I replied:
Dear XXXX
I appreciate the gesture, but I don't feel that it comes even remotely near appropriate compensation for the inconvenience and stress you caused.
If we look at phone call time alone, I was on the phone to either you or Egertons for circa 5 hours between 9th & the 14th of March, I spent over 6 hours waiting to be recovered (eventually picked up by a Taxi) and my wife had 2 days of waiting in for the hire car to be collected.
We value our time much more highly than £125.00
I hope to receive a more appropriate settlement offer in reasonably short order.
The next day I received this reply:
Dear Mr Tims,
Thank you for your e-mail.
I’m sorry that you’re unhappy with my offer.
I do feel a full refund of your premiums is a fair and reasonable offer. Whilst I fully acknowledge your experience, we do also need to consider that from a terms and conditions perspective, we don’t guarantee our attendance times, especially in the circumstances of extreme weather.
As such, I’m satisfied a full policy refund is appropriate, and it will remain my final offer.
I would not ever retract the offer of the refund, so that is still making its way to you. Further to that however, I’m sorry that I could not more satisfactorily resolve your concerns.
I’m happy to remain as a point of contact if you need anything else, so don’t hesitate to get in touch if there’s anything you need.
So today (2nd April), after a couple of days to consider, I responded to say:
Dear XXXX
I acknowledge your stance and I’m not going to demean myself by requesting that you reconsider.
I am still considering taking legal action, but I am most certainly going to post an accurate account of the whole sorry affair on every possible social media outlet I can. Additionally I have friends in motoring journalism and am a long term subscriber to 3 monthly motoring magazines.
I am determined to make sure as many people get to hear what a complete shower your organisation has become. I see it as my responsibility.
Just to clarify, I don't expect, or wish to receive a response.
I don't see how further discourse would be productive.
Regards
I don't believe my experience was even that exceptional from the reaction to the social media posts I've already made and for most of my membership of the RAC since 2003 service has generally been pretty good. It seems that the deterioration has happened relatively recently.
Andy Tims
02.04.18
OP, out of curiosity, what would you consider reasonable recompense?
This has got "compo claim" written all over it, perhaps a contender for the council thread?
Maybe one of your friends in motoring journalism could do an article which includes a photo of you standing next to your car pulling a suitably sad face - that seems to be the way these things normally progress.
andy tims said:
...for most of my membership of the RAC since 2003 service has generally been pretty good. It seems that the deterioration has happened relatively recently.
There lies your problem. You've been a member of RAC since 2003 and they don't give a flying about you. So why stay? A lot of people think being a longstanding member creates an expectation of better service. AA Silver/Gold Member? 
Give me a break!Here's my guide to breakdown cover (without Autoaid etc):
(1) Sign up to AA Breakdown through Quidco or Topcashback - full bells and whistles for Mrs V. & I for around £250, a few months later receive £145 cashback.
(2) Nearly a year later cancel renewal with the AA. Sign up to RAC Breakdown through Quidco or Topcashback - full bells and whistles for Mrs V. & I for around £250, a few months later receive £145 cashback.
(3) Repeat each year.
The AA/RAC used to value your membership when they were equitable institutions. Now providing breakdown cover is a huge inconvenience to them as they would rather just sell you insurance and financial services.
I can see why you're cross, but they have offered a reasonable solution and a decent (ish) explanation of why their service standards were low on this occasion. I don't really see what else you could reasonably expect.
You don't help your case, with them or us, when you turned petulant. These things happen and a decent company will try to make it right; a full refund whilst maintaining cover seems a decent response to me.
You don't help your case, with them or us, when you turned petulant. These things happen and a decent company will try to make it right; a full refund whilst maintaining cover seems a decent response to me.
andy tims said:
Dear XXXX
I acknowledge your stance and I’m not going to demean myself by requesting that you reconsider.
I am still considering taking legal action, but I am most certainly going to post an accurate account of the whole sorry affair on every possible social media outlet I can. Additionally I have friends in motoring journalism and am a long term subscriber to 3 monthly motoring magazines.
I am determined to make sure as many people get to hear what a complete shower your organisation has become. I see it as my responsibility.
Just to clarify, I don't expect, or wish to receive a response.
I don't see how further discourse would be productive.
Regards
You have done an excellent job of demeaning yourself with this reply. I acknowledge your stance and I’m not going to demean myself by requesting that you reconsider.
I am still considering taking legal action, but I am most certainly going to post an accurate account of the whole sorry affair on every possible social media outlet I can. Additionally I have friends in motoring journalism and am a long term subscriber to 3 monthly motoring magazines.
I am determined to make sure as many people get to hear what a complete shower your organisation has become. I see it as my responsibility.
Just to clarify, I don't expect, or wish to receive a response.
I don't see how further discourse would be productive.
Regards
It’s sounds very similar to this account:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-4338453...
I certainly wouldn’t use them now, there are far better companies out there who are also cheaper.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-4338453...
I certainly wouldn’t use them now, there are far better companies out there who are also cheaper.
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