Colonelk
Posted a lot
Posts: 3,740
Club RR Member Number: 83
|
|
Aug 15, 2013 13:48:30 GMT
|
Get in touch with your insurance company and see what they offer, I got home start, relay and European cover for an extra £50 on my policy and they obviously know how old the car is. As an extra piece of info to this, if your insurance company gladly states "ooooh you get free breakdown cover" please please read the small print and ts and cs! The amount of people I recovered who were convinced they were covered by recovery through their insurance, and then found out they only had roadside cover (and so had to pay for the tow!)! Not you popup, that sounds like you know what you have
|
|
|
|
MrSpeedy
East Midlands
www.vintagediesels.co.uk
Posts: 4,786
|
|
Aug 15, 2013 17:31:34 GMT
|
I've always had breakdown cover through my insurance (Footman James).
Had to call them a couple of times for the Vitesse (one broken accelerator cable and one burst oil cooler hose). Not great distances, but no quibble about recovering home.
Had to call them twice on my old 190E to. (Once melted wiring loom and once broken drive shaft). Both from the same car park in Northampton and both times got the car recovered to my workshop, then got dropped off at my home address.
Sometimes they can be a bit slow (Like sending a driver from Kettering to make a recovery from Crick, going back to Rugby! Still can't understand the logic of that one) but never any question about collecting me
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thanks for all the ideas & info, still looking and not sorted yet Essentials now nailed down - "me covered (preferrably Personal / any vehicle) - must include recovery" Would like to have cover for SHMBO but can do without it ( I think - but she might not agree AA relay cover has never let me down, they've brought some right wibblepoo some massive distances Sounds good - but £79 just for me... www.theaa.com/breakdown-cover/rac are doing personal for 29.99 I rechecked after our chat but I still can't find Personal from £29 The page below starts as "Named vehicle - Roadside only £29" but as soon as I change to "Personal - Roadside" it jumps to £42, add in "Recovery and it goes up to £66 www.rac.co.uk/breakdown-cover/uk-breakdown/Greenflag Recovery starts from £55 (not sure if this is personal or for a named vehicle...) www.greenflag.com/breakdown-cover/And another comparison site for info... www.knowyourmoney.co.uk/breakdown-cover/The mission continues ... ( I know - it would have made sense to sort this BEFORE the roadtrip to RRG13 but since when does being sensible come onto it )
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I HIGHLY recommend ADAC breakdown cover, age of the car is irrelevant as it covers the person/people. I put up this post on another forum just recently: www.adac.de/mitgliedschaft/adac_membership/default.aspx#ank84033If you would like to join you can email Petra in English and she will sort it out for you. petra.leyrer@nrh.adac.de Spurred on by Adam's unlucky experience with his headgasket going and having large recovery costs I thought I would put up a thread detailing ADAC cover as not a lot of people seem to know about it. ADAC is a German breakdown company that offer European breakdown cover (including surrounding countries), you can join up as a UK citizen/resident. For 79 Euros (about £69) you can get a years ADAC plus membership. For 98 Euros you can get cover for a 'couple'. They will recover you to a garage, if they cannot fix it that day then they will pay up to 130 Euros per night for a hotel for you. If it cannot be fixed at all (blown engine etc) then they will recover it back to the UK FREE OF CHARGE, even if it is an old banger with little value! If you breakdown in the UK then they will send out the RAC or AA, similarly if you breakdown in other countries they send out local recovery companies. They will also cover the recovery cost if you breakdown/crash on the nurburgring. I have only recently taken out membership myself and I am so glad I have. I have had 1 direct and one indirect dealing with ADAC in the last month, judge for yourself if the service is worth £69! Direct Dealing: Last week my friend and I were touring Europe in his BMW, we were part way up the Gotthard pass when we noticed it had a flat tyre, being a relatively new BMW it has no spare wheel, only a can of tyre weld (no runflats). We read the tyre weld instructions several times and followed them precisely, all seemed ok at first until we inflated the tyre again as per the instructions. When we started driving again with the freshly 'fixed' and inflated tyre, we got about 100 yds when the tyre exploded. I rang the ADAC, explained we were in the middle of nowhere up a mountain pass, within 45 minutes we were recovered on a trailer and taken back to a garage. They didn't have any suitable tyres in stock to fix it so the ADAC arranged a hotel for us, the hotel was 170 swiss francs which was just over 130 Euros so we had to pay a whole 10 swiss francs (£6) towards the hotel cost, it was however an extremely nice hotel, easily the equivalent of a 4 or 5 star here in the UK. All of this was arranged without question and with urgency. The next morning the car was fixed, we paid the tyre bill and left. Indirect Dealing: At the beginning of August I went on 'retrorun' to the Nurburgring for a week, on the way back some friends in a Metro broke down in Germany, turns out the diff died, they got recovered to an ADAC place in Germany (not sure of waiting times etc). They knew the car couldn't be fixed so the ADAC arranged for the car to be delivered back to the UK, however they said this would take a couple of weeks as they wait until they have a transporter load full to take at once. This left them with the task of getting back home, ADAC were happy to supply a hire car they could take and leave in the UK, however it would cost them 300 Euros (not bad for Germany to UK one way hire), luckily I wasn't too far away in Belgium and just redirected back to Germany to pick them up. However if you were in that situation without a friend to give you a lift 300 Euros is not a bad price (about half what Adam had to pay for a 170 odd mile recovery). EDIT: Forgot to add that it only took about a week for the metro to get back to the UK I highly recommend this to anyone, as far as I can see it is far superior to AA or RAC breakdown cover.
|
|
Last Edit: Aug 23, 2013 2:46:07 GMT by goliath
|
|