tom blashill

Breakdown Assistance

You're on holiday in a foreign country and your car breaks down. You don't speak the language and you are miles from anywhere. It won't happen to me we think. Well it did happen to me and this article may just stop you having the problems I did.

Why you need vehicle breakdown insurance – a true story!

By chance I saw an advertisement for breakdown insurance, and as we were planning a holiday to France decided to investigate further. That was one of the smartest decisions I have ever made.

I would point out that this is not an advertisement for any company and I receive no reward for anything I write in this article.

I checked out the ‘usual suspects’ but found that both the AA and RAC costs were higher than I wished to pay. Then I came across Morethan, a company I had looked at for vehicle insurance in the past, but never used.

Their offer, which included a comprehensive Europe assistance contact, was priced at about £50, and I bought it.

My car is a Landrover Freelander and has given me many years of relatively trouble free motoring, so I looked on the insurance purely as a safeguard.

Well, when we came to leave our rented Chamonix ski apartment, the battery had frozen and would not start the car. I called the UK helpline number and about an hour later the recovery vehicle came and the mechanic started our car.

We motored back to our holiday home without incident and nothing untoward happened for about two weeks. Then, returning from a shopping trip the car engine simply died on me, and no attempts to start it would work.

So, once again, it was call the Morethan Rescue team in the UK. They asked me to call back with more information about my location, which I did, and about an hour later the recovery vehicle arrived.

This time the mechanic could not start the engine so the car was loaded onto the back of his lorry and my dog and I were loaded into the cab. We were dropped off at our holiday home and the car taken to the garage, about ten miles away.

The next morning I had a call from Morethan (who operate with Europ Assistace I believe) to tell me that the car needed to go to Bordeaux to the Landrover specialist, who had the diagnostic equipment required. They said that, as this was likely to take a few days, a hire car had been arranged and a taxi would collect me at 0900 the next day to take me to the Avis car hire premises. All this was to be done at no cost to me.

Sure enough, at 0900 the next day the taxi arrived and took me to the Avis office. I noticed that the meter was reading about 55 Euros, so, if I had been paying, the round trip fare would have been about £100.

That all happened about two weeks ago and my car had still not been repaired so yesterday I drove the 60 miles or so to the garage in Bordeaux to see what was happening. The short answer was – nothing - because the French garage has it as a low priority and tell me ‘tomorrow’ or ‘next week’.

Well, I have spent enough time in France now to know that that could mean anytime in the next month or so!

Morethan have told me that they will give it another four days and then arrange for the car to be removed and repatriated, along with my wife and I, to the UK if the garage have not sorted it out.

I have nothing but praise for Morethan but am decidedly unimpressed with the French Landrover dealer who originally diagnosed the fault as a fuel pump, replaced the pump, and then decided it was a fuel injector, ordered the part (so he says) and then decided it was not an injector fault. So my car is stuck in the garage with the engine in bits.

So, what lessons have I learnt from this experience?

1.        Make sure you have good breakdown insurance.

2.        Make sure your mobile phone is fully charged and loaded – calls to UK take a lot of credit.

3.        Make sure you know how to get credit on your phone by understanding the French operator. (Their recorded messages are very quickly spoken!)

4.        Have a contingency plan to cover the eventuality that your stay in France may be longer than expected. (If we had not had the convenience of our holiday accommodation Morethan would have paid for us to stay in a hotel).

5.        If you have to deal with a French garage try and get one who tells you facts not fantasy.

Good luck on your next holiday.

Tom

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