When Chris Overend’s seven-year-old Mercedes Benz B-Class broke down on the side of a dual carriageway on a freezing night last March, he assumed the RAC would arrive quickly to help.
Mr Overend, 66, works as a professional driver and he says the recovery group have been brilliant in previous calls.
He had paid £138 for his annual membership, compared to £75 in 2021.
“Even though I was in a precarious position – right on the edge of an on-ramp to the A1 motorway – I wasn’t worried. I was confident that the RAC would get me home safely. How absolutely wrong I was,” Mr. Overend says.
Breakdown: Chris Overend called the RAC before 10pm – but the company had no patrols available (stock image)
Chris and his wife Liz, 64, were driving home to Grantham, south Lincolnshire, from Manchester and were stranded overnight by the RAC in sub-zero temperatures.
It took the company more than 12 hours to get them home.
The Overends first called the RAC just before 10pm – when it was -1C – but the company had no patrols available.
“We waited at the side of the road for eight hours, until a contractor from a local garage arrived at 5 a.m.,” says Overend, “but he couldn’t get the car and took us to a service area.”
The couple finally arrived home at 10am, when they received a call from the Highways Agency, who had provided them with foil blankets during their overnight debacle.
“The Highways Agency told us the RAC did not return to collect the vehicle so they had to remove it from the side of the road to their compound.”
The Overend’s nightmare didn’t end there. “I spent five hours on the phone with the RAC moving from one department to another.
“But it took another 12 days for the RAC to collect my car from the precinct and take it to the garage.”
“At that time, the RAC did not contact me and offer me a rental car. I had to pay for a car myself to continue working.
Missed earnings, car replacement costs and repair costs left the Overends more than £1,900 out of pocket – but the RAC only offered £150 compensation.
“It’s difficult to convey the level of betrayal, frustration and abandonment,” Overend adds.
The RAC said: “We have also apologized to Mr Overend for not recovering his vehicle much more quickly and offered him a gesture of goodwill to reflect this.”
He has now ditched RAC – which paid off his policy but allowed him to continue his policy for a year – and moved to another provider.
Customers can complain further, to the Financial Ombudsman, but the Ombudsman stresses that its jurisdiction is limited to complaints about the negotiation of a payday policy – the organization or administration of the contract, for example, when renewal or cancellation, rather than the troubleshooting service. himself.
Social media, and even the RAC’s online customer forum, is full of criticism from disappointed members.
In just one month, a litany of X complaints addressed to the RAC support account.
One wrote: “My daughter has been waiting for over five hours for someone to pick her up, alone in a freezing car.”
Another said the RAC was an “absolute disaster for a business”. Broken down, promised recovery within 60-90 minutes and rated “high priority” on the side of a highway. No sign of anyone for 7 hours! RAC learned that one of the passengers was diabetic without medication.
A third complained: “I had to use my RAC cover on my new car last night. After almost four hours stuck on a dark downtown street, no one showed up! Fortunately, AA arrived after 45 minutes. Disgusted by your terrible service! I’ll never use you again!’
And in December, TV personality Debbie McGee slammed RAC for leaving her stranded after her car broke down.
Not quite magical: Debbie McGee recently slammed RAC for leaving her stranded when her car broke down
Some critics blame the company’s change in ownership structure for declining service levels.
The RAC enjoyed a hundred years of stability as a mutual until 1999 – but in the years since, no fewer than six different companies have bought and sold the business.
It is currently owned by three investment giants: Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, Luxembourg private equity firm CVC Capital Partners and Silver Lake, a US buyout group that owns Dell computers.
All these negotiations increased the company’s debt. Although its 13 million members in the UK generated revenues of £664 million in 2022, according to the latest published data, its funding costs were more than £250 million.
As a result, the company made a loss of £316 million and reduced its tax bill during the year.
RAC Group Holdings Ltd, which owns the breakdown business, paid £61 million in tax in 2021, but only £4 million in 2022.
The RAC put this down to the fact that the higher figure is “impacted by a one-off charge of £49 million due to the effect of planned future tax rate changes”.
The company managed to give a pay rise to its highest-paid director, likely chief executive Dave Hobday. His salary package of £1 million in 2021 increased to £1.24 million in 2022.
Stranded: RAC left Lucy Tobin’s elderly father in trouble after breakdown on New Year’s Eve
It took 25 hours for RAC to arrive
Hobday is a name I know personally, having spent the last few months sending him emails regarding my family’s poor service at the hands of the RAC.
Our debacle began on New Year’s Eve, when my father’s two-year-old Nissan Leaf broke down at my parents’ house.
As my father is unfortunately very ill, I went around to help, phoning the RAC – of which my parents had been members for two years, a “benefit” offered with the purchase of the car from Nissan – at around 9am .
I was told the call was classified as “Category 1, Medical Priority” due to my father’s condition – but a patrol vehicle didn’t arrive until eight o’clock.
He then restarted the Leaf by resetting the vehicle, clearing all error messages, meaning the garage was unable to determine the reason for the problem, so it recurred two weeks later.
This time, my mother, who is 70 years old, was driving when the car broke down.
Luckily, she was only a mile away from home, picking up some medicine for my dad, so I left to take her home.
She called the RAC shortly after noon. Once again, they promised rapid progress because this was a priority medical intervention.
But the RAC did arrive to tow the vehicle 25 hours later.
I had waited by the car until 7 p.m., when a patrolman arrived seven hours later, at 7 p.m., but his vehicle was unable to tow the Nissan Leaf – even though the car was registered on the call sheet.
Standing on the freezing street, I asked the patrolman if I should wait with the vehicle until the tow truck arrived, and was explicitly told that it was not necessary.
The van, which I was then told was due to arrive at 1 a.m., would contact me at my home, a mile away, to collect the car keys, so no one would have to wait in the car in subzero temperatures. until early morning.
I went home to wait – however, when the tow truck company made contact before their 1am pickup slot, the controller said there was “no way” they would pick up the keys in a different location and I had to wait with the vehicle.
At 10pm I then phoned the RAC to ask if I was supposed to stay alone in the broken down and unlocked car until 1am with my children, and was told yes – unless I please rebook the pick up for five hours. slot the next day.
Reluctantly, I did this rather than wait in the car until 1am. The next day, I was given a five-hour wait time and had to cancel family plans.
The car was finally recovered at 1 p.m. on Saturday, 25 hours after the first call to the RAC.
The help desk’s social media account is called RAC Care.
But our experience and that of many other clients suggests that sometimes private equity firms don’t care much.
The RAC said it was “extremely sorry that Mr Tobin and Mr Overend did not receive our usual level of service”.
“The vast majority of our members experience fast and efficient service, but when we face thousands of outages in different locations every day, there will be times when things don’t go as they should.”
The RAC offered my parents compensation of £200, but their experience means they now intend to change provider.
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