Its insurance renewal time and I’ve had my breakdown cover as part of the package. They’ve stuck the price of that bit up by 50% (£60->£90), so looking at other options.

Any recommendations? I’ve Meerkated and there’s suggestions for sub £25 which I don’t entirely trust. Companies I’ve heard of are closer to the existing price.

(covering the car, not the driver; homestart, recovery to destination of choice, onward travel)

Thanks!

We have a Nationwide Bank Account – FlexPlus. It costs a bit but the travel insurance (what’s that?) and vehicle breakdown cover are first class. Any vehicle either of the joint account holders travelling in gets cover.

I’m with Start Rescue and can recommend them (not sure how much I’m paying though, just a lot less than I was with the RAC). Had to call them out last year, was painless and the tow truck arrived within an hour (more like 40 mins) and transported me and the car home (I had a seized disc)

Been with AutoAid for a few years now, had a couple of recovery’s, without issue (not lately). I look round each year, and have yet to see no reason to change.

I’m with Green Flag, think it’s £160/year, but that’s ticking just about every box and in a 16 year old car.

Had to use it last month when the clutch went on the Berlingo. On the one hand, they did trailer it all the way from Liverpool to Reading and got me a hire car.

On the other

Wednesday night 11pm – phoned them, agreed it wasn’t worth dealing with tonight as it would be an hour for the van, and another hour at least before the recovery truck was dispatched and I didn’t want to be hanging around till 3am so just got a taxi to the hotel.

Thursday 10am – start the whole process again.
Saturday 3pm – phone for what feels like the umpteenth time to cancel the recovery truck as I had to get back to work for the night shift. And the computer says no that I can’t get a hire car, just a train back once the car is recovered. 3.45 recovery truck has apparently arrived despite being canceled.

Friday – Repeat of Thursday, except now they claim that as I’ve refused the tow (no, I canceled it before you’d even dispatched it as it was -3C and had taken 4 hours to get to that point) it takes a good hour and a half of being called a liar to get them to dispatch a truck. Then they can’t book a train, or even google the price, I have to find a price, then phone them back for approval. Which they then don’t give, but will arrange a hire car instead (why couldn’t they just have got me that on Friday night so i didn’t have to spend the week taxiing arround?).

A couple of days more shifts, head home, enterprise isn’t open Sundays in Reading so I can’t take the car back, and have to head back up for the next block. So now have to pay for another 3 days car hire. The Berlingo then get’s dropped off about 20 minutes after I left on Monday morning so I could probably have spent half a day fixing it and been back on the road anyway.

TL;DR
Greenflag probably spent a fortune sorting me out, but it was a PITA. And because there’s a lot of “or” in their policy actually gettign the outcome you want/need is a bit of a lottery.

I’m in the premium bank account club. Not worth it for just the breakdown cover, but if you’re also paying travel insurance and for a couple of iPhones it’s decent value.

Rescuemycar.com have been good for us, the few times we’ve needed them. Deals with local garages to where you are broken down but has all the options for different levels of recovery. Google reviews suggest a more negative story recently though…

I have been with Autoaid for years – never had to use it, but the feedback (see Moneysavingexpert) is excellent when people do need assistance. An advantage for those in particularly rural areas is you/they use local garages – this was brought home to us on holiday in Arran when we had AA cover…the local garage recovered our car for free and without us waiting for AA to catch a ferry… It is since then I have been Autoaid or Greenflag.

I just moved to Greenflag as the cost of them covering 4 people across two cars was better than Autoaid.

I’m with nationwide. Used them twice so far (they use a local contractor).

Both times picked the vehicles up and dropped them home. All very painless.

(I do need to check if our current camper is covered, not sure if it’s over their length limit).

I used autoaid for years but no need for callouts.

They were taken over a couple of years ago, increased price and moved users to autorenewal by default. Within the cooling off period they took a large fee, circa half the whole year sub.

I go nowhere complaining to them for a refund, noticed on their letterhead they were fca reg, threatened to complain to fca, got a complete refund.

Check the various cash back sites, the big players do very good cash back deals to get people signed up.

Been with AutoAid for years , had to use them last year – fast professional service with no problems.

Green Flag here. Had to use them a couple of years back when the tyre on my car blew out. Was only about 5 miles from home but no spare and the can of gunk wasn’t going to cut it.

Think it took about an hour to get home on the back of a low loader. Was a nice sunny day and a nice view of the countryside so couldn’t really complain.

Greenflag here. Used them quite a few times over the last few years with my old beloved T4. Service has been great and with the app you can track where the recovery vehicle is. They do use local people, so only issue I had was they sent a vauxhall astra to pull the T4 out of my drive and up a dirt track. The astra broke down once it had pulled me up the drive.

Barclays bank account with ‘travel pack’.

It’s about £14 a month, but includes full RAC cover for any car the wife and I are in.

Used 3 or 4 times over the last 5 years.
Towed home once when the cambelt died, ran out of fuel on motorway 🤭, double puncture in the middle of a Dartmoor thunderstorm, all dealt with quickly and no hassle.

Been Autoaid for years as well (actually lapsed for a year or so, oops!) but when we’ve had to call out its been fast and decent service.

+1 for Nationwide Flexplus joint account.
I’ve certainly had my moneys worth out of it for breakdown and phone insurance for both myself and my wife.
Added benefit is that you don’t have to worry about any sort of claims increasing premiums in the future so less upsetting to claim on it.

I think the breakdown cover is limited to 6 callouts per year between you but if you reach that I think you have bigger problems.