I’ve always had RAC breakdown cover, and they have been very good as and when they’ve been needed. However, my car insurance is up, and I’ve been offered what seems to be the same cover (including european travel – which I may need) for £50ish as opposed to £120ish for the RAC. I know they use the local breakdown agents (a la green flag) as opposed to an orange van turning up. Is there anything obvious that I may get stung for by using them instead of RAC (thereby saving me some more bike money!) Does anyone have any experiences (good / bad) after having changed from RAC / AA to an insurance-based recovery package?

just check whethe rthey are offering car specific cover as opposed to personal cover if that’s your normal arrangement.

Personal cover means you are covered in any car.
Car cover means anyone is covered in that one car.

Literally called RAC this morning about renewal. Their renewal quote in the post was £180 ish (joint personal, home and roadside) – called them because the online new member price was £140 cheeky ****!

Anyway, got the renewal down to £120 for both of us.

I have seperate European cover with no length of trip limitations for the camper van. Most companies have a limit like 30 or 90 days.

Ive owned over 20cars and drive circa20,000miles a year and have never had breakdown cover (except for European-trips). Am I missing something?!!!! 🙂

Never had breakdown cover myself either. That said there was a thread on here recently with what appears to be a good on-line non-RAC/AA deal going on – if only I could bloody remember!!

BTW – this was the cover story of this weekend’s Guardian Money section
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/may/30/aa-breakdown-recovery

I have never had breakdown cover however when I discovered you can get RAC with Tesco points I decided to splash out (as I have a motorbike as well and I guess slightly more important sometimes having a motorbike and cover). It’s great £34 of vouchers gets us joint reoadside recovery and something which would cost something like £120!!! bargain … I don’t know what else to use my clubcard points for as all the holidays/hotels etc always look so complicated to arrange!

do greenflag have there own fleet of recovery drivers like AA & RAC or are they local garages signed up to a network? might be less incentive to repair at the roadside if not <purely speculating>

i got a good deal on AA membership by going through one of the cashback sites. worth a look if you don’t do the tesco clubcard route

We used to use Autonational Rescue who are very competitive, they contract out to local garages. Never call them out over the three years we held the policy.

Then we changed to the AA, had to call them out twice in two years. Both times we didn’t get a nice yellow van, they were busy so contracted out to local garages anyway! Second time was one of those ‘ontime’ recovery trucks.

So in future I’ll go purely on price. Also it suits us to have a policy that covers the car rather than each person individually, works out much cheaper 🙂

we have 2 cars but each drive them some of the time. Also Ive used my RAC cover on my dads car while I was at his house and he was away.

I find the personal cover most useful.

My breakdown cover went up too.

Luckily I had a few Tesco cash vouchers and for £27 I received £120 worth of cover!

Everyone is doing it now and £30 only gets roadside and relay.

Sounds LV insurance. I would go on to insurers website to check their breakdown service.

Besides you’ll have 10days after the purchase to change your mind?

Well, having had the misfortune to get my money’s worth out of the RAC for the past 5 years of motoring, it sadly seems to be a service I need! Hopefully I won’t have to find out with my new (to me) car mind you…