UK breakdown service to cover driving in France ?

[Loiseau]

Just wondered whether anyone would particularly recommend one company over another here?

I was originally with the RAC just for UK cover, and took out something with Insure and Go to cover occasional trips to France. I got exasperated with I&G when I tried to renew for a second year, and could never get through to them.

Then I was persuaded by my car insurer Norwich Union to give *their* breakdown service a go. I left the RAC and took that, complete with breakdown cover for mainland Europe, for a total of £106 p.a   Now renewal time has come, and grrrrrrrrrrr - again I cannot get through to *their* renewals department !

I can feel another change of breakdown-service provider coming on...

Angela

 

[Baz]

Some Car breakdown services in the UK are  internet based, however there are over 100 different policies available. IMO the best way to tackle this and give you the choice and price is to use an independent website. I have used and often recommended this site for this purpose, however I should point out that I have no connections with them.

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/RoadsideRescue/

Baz

[Russethouse]

 I second the advice of Baz - I use Money Saving Expert for things such as this, they often link to Money supermarket.

In the UK we are with the RAC and have a direct debit, I never have to worry about renewals. I recently added my daughter to our 'policy' and we had a note confirming the next day and the card within the week. (By the way, if I took MSE advice I should probably change to Green Flag.)

[Loiseau]

Hey, that Money Supermarket link is great!  Thanks Baz.   And RH.

Actually I just remembered that I have AA cover for the UK courtesy of my bank.  Called the AA yesterday to see what it would cost to add annual European breakdown cover, and they said £115.  [:(]  I thought that sounded a bit much, seeing I had been paying £106 for UK AND European before. (Though at least the AA seem to have enough staff to answer the telephone, unlike NUnion!).

However, I have now remembered reading on this forum ages ago about a good deal with Eurotunnel that you can sign up for when making a booking (which I am about to do anyway).  I just checked that, and I see that through them you can have annual European breakdown cover *supplied by the AA* for £79.  As I am likely to make regular short trips of about 3-4 days each time, this seems to be the best bet.

Angela

[dave21478]

Read the small-print carefully. Both AA and RAC European cover make no obvious mention of this but in the small-print, the covered vehicle has to have proof of service history or they can refuse cover or pursue you for costs after recovery.

I run older cars which I service myself and have no proof of servicing, which as far as I can tell makes these two companies useless for me.

I cant speak for the other companies, and a quick look on that site above shows at least one (Britannia) that make no additional charges for older vehicles, though I would need to read the full policy to be certain.

 

 

 

[Val_2]

Another thing you may not beware of is that with one well known UK breakdown company, they only had one garage in the WHOLEof Brittany that would deal with a visiting friend's Rover car when it broke down and it was three hours away from here as well. There was just no one else dealing with their organisation and UK vehicles out here although since then it may have changed, but do check where your nearest help would be.

[cooperlola]

You could try joining the ACO here in France - they offer a full range of recovery services and are good value.  They are quite used to English members as they run the great 24 hour race.  www.lemans.org

[Anton Redman]

As soon as you stopped risking having to pay three times the on the road cost of your car if you write it of in France and currency regulations stopped you getting the money out of the UK we stopped paying for three five or if you are Greek 8 star cover.

I can just about accept that you are tired, driving further and driving on the wrong side of the road so more likely to have a serious accident, I can accept £ 10 of admin to sort out the paper work. What I could not do was accept that I was 25 times more likely to stuff the car on holiday in France than I was driving up to Perth

 

[Alane]

I've been covered by the AA (via the Eurotunnel scheme) in previous years and was NEVER asked for proof of servicing history. I was "lucky" in that my alternator failed, starter motor failed and an electrical fault manifested in France and the labour costs for replacement were covered by the insurance and that I suffered no more than relatively minor inconvenience for all of them. Incidentally I have a full service history on my car but the insurer never asked.

[Rascalb]

We have cover with More Than for both our vehicles. I had to use them last month and was not asked for service history. The cost is very reasonable Citroen Picasso and BMW tourer (11 years old)both cost around £65 for full cover including homestart and Europe. They took around 1 hour 45 mins to reach us but mainly because it was school holidays and they were very busy! Obviously a lot of companies charge extra for vehicles over 15 years old and this may be where the service history kicks in.