Like many of us 2-wheel road users I have had an insurance policy with Carole Nash for many years. This post is not about the price at policy renewal, which has actually gone down £1-odd
for a slight increase in valuation of my insured bikes (including a Norton of course)
Rather my post concerns the change to their provider of breakdown recovery.
Last year it was:
Inter Partner Assistance S.A. UK Branch Product: UK & European Breakdown Assistance.
and I think it has been for a good few years. I have had cause to use their services and have little cause for complaint. Once they recovered me from a snow bound campsite in the Scottish Highlands on a Bank holiday, and I was home for tea.
From my renewal next month breakdown cover will change to the RAC...
I'm a bit worried by this. The RAC do not have the best of reputations when it comes to customer service on a car breakdown. I don't believe they are set up to deal with fixing our old clunkers at the side of the road with their laptops and metric spanners. Nor does it appear that their patrol vans carry a k/d bike trailer as standard. I don't breakdown very often (he says touching a big lump of wood) and if I do, I expect my toolkit will contain the all necessary items to effect a fix myself. Punctures is where I've been caught out, (tubed tyres, so the "Finelec" type aerosol cans are not really effective), and failure of electrical/mechanical components where I am not carrying a spare.
So what I want from my recovery service is just that. Recovery. Home. I'm not interested in the RAC meeting it's attendance time target. If I tell them that they ain't gonna be fixing my 500 Norton at the side of the road, are they going to listen? Or will they just send the standard patrol van round ??
And keep me waiting many more hours whilst they arrange recovery which I asked them for in the first place.
I'm going to have a conversation with Carole Nash, but it would be useful to hear what other folk think.
Also I think it's important to draw this to the attention of our membership as the change in breakdown provider is not exactly a headline in the renewal documentation.
As I am the lucky owner of a few bikes I do have them split between two different insurance providers, the other provider being Peter James, and I have no issues there. And in case you are wondering why I have two policies, it's just so that in the event of a major disagreement with one provider, (which I have experienced in the distant past following a no fault claim) then I would not be left high and dry.
Bit of a rant? but what do you think?
Duncan.
I too have bundled cover..
- Log in to post comments
RAC
Hi Duncan,
I have had the need to call out the RAC twice in the last 15 years and can only say neither experience was good. First one, my bike ran a main bearing, taking out the alternator/magneto in the process. Apparently, despite being an engine development engineer, I wasn't qualified to say it couldn't be fixed at the roadside and had to wait for a van to arrive and tell me/call centre that I needed recovering. Total time to get home was 7 hours for a 10 mile journey. I could probably have pushed it home quicker!
Then last year, I had an electrical fault on the Norton - a soldered connection on the coil failed- and I called the RAC again. This time I was told that a specialist recovery company, contracted to the RAC would recover me shortly.
After 3 hours, my wife spoke to one of our neighbours who has a van and he came out and rescued me.
RAC? My personal experience is they are virtually useless.
From that, I'm like Ian and now put my faith in Britannia.
George
- Log in to post comments
Carole Nash European recovery.
Some years back en route to the International Rally in Bremen my camshaft decided to call it a day. More than mildly inconvenient !
I had European recovery via my Carole Nash insurance. CN had outsourced the recovery to Axa who it has to be said were worse than useless. If it had not been for the assistance of Norman Lorton (stout chap !) and his wife taking the bike to the ferry in their van and loaning us their bike to follow on, we would have been really stuck.
Just as disappointing was that when I returned to the UK I spoke to CN and they were basically just disinterested.
My next renewal I moved to Hagerty where I have been since.
- Log in to post comments
I whole heartedly agree with…
I whole heartedly agree with the above comments regarding poor / nil service from the RAC . No RAC bike recovery vehicles in their fleet , waste many hours not listening to you, Nil service ,their sub contractors with no interest and no comeback .Push it home ,faster byfar ! .Last breakdown 7 hours wait before I sorted out my own recovery. Dont want it even if free. AA are a bit better having van which can recover.
- Log in to post comments
Carole Nash Insurance and breakdown recovery.
Thanks for all the comments chaps. Keep it coming. Lots of ammo to fire at Carole Nash.
- Log in to post comments
RAC breadown cover
Hi, Duncan.
Just to add to the previous comments I've had two occasions to call out the RAC over the last 7 years. The first was a puncture and at least they didn't insist on one of their vans attending first to check things out though it still took them 3 hours before the recovery wagon turned up. And it was a blazing hot day as well. Suppose I should have been grateful it wasn't raining. The second time was when the spot welded auto advance sprocket (for the electronic ignition I was using at the time) weld sheared to throw the timing all over the place (since replaced with a dedicated solid sprocket so it can't happen again). They insisted on one of their guys coming out to assess things first in spite of my objections but the guy they allotted the job to very luckily rang me up first to check things out and accepted that there was nothing he could do so pretended he'd seen me to speed up the use of the recovery wagon. It still took them three hours to turn up. Another nice hot day as it happened so in that respect I was lucky. I was only 5 miles from home but don't have any contacts with a van or I would have tried one of them first. The good thing is that they did eventually sort me out but it wasn't the best experience.I will be interested to learn of other members' experiences, especially if any were particularly good as my current cover is still with the RAC.
- Log in to post comments
yes totally agree.. I am…
yes totally agree..
I am with the AA too for years but I also too have a few bikes on Carol Nash ins and was thinking of giving up the AA as C/N has breakdown cover why pay for too.
But if RAC have no real van`s fitted with a recovery Trailer then I think I will stay with them as a back up. But I will say that even the AA policy is to send out a repair truck even if you have told them its NOT Reparable. as a few years ago was taken the Mrs out for a fish & chip lunch and the Triumph Broke down had to wait 3 hours for the repair man to turn up even tho..... I he said its Not reparable sorry mate I can`t fix that............ I said have told them that when I phoned up, so he just put in to get a recovery truck and that took anther 3 1/2 Hours .......... why is it that No one seems to listen to what you say ?
Oh the Triumph had snapped a pri Belt.... Make a right mess in the case I can tell you..... Not the first time too done that 3 times ........... why did I ever fit a Belt drive .........good Job Not got one on my Norton.
- Log in to post comments
Been riding a dommy for too…
Been riding a dommy for too many years , never broke a primary chain.
- Log in to post comments
I also had a seriously bad…
I also had a seriously bad RAC experience after an accident on the way to Sammy millers - I shall not be with them for much longer.
dan
- Log in to post comments
The RAC are at best highly…
The RAC are at best highly variable, but the dispersion is heavily weighted to the interminable side.
However, in my experience the call centre will believe you when you assess the problem as unfixable at the roadside, but then you may have a very long wait.
I detailed my worst experience in a piece in Roadholder 421 ("A funny thing happened … ").
TL;DR — machine failed 8 pm on M11 and RAC informed; at midnight Highways England insisted (perfectly reasonably) that I use their contractor to be removed to the nearest services. At 3 am RAC finally turned up; home in SE London at 5 am.
The very nice HE contractor said his firm refused to do RAC jobs because of the grief they got from dissatisfied RAC clients left in the lurch.
- Log in to post comments
RAC are worse than Rubbish.
This is very concerning as an ex customer of 30 plus years with a personal breakdown cover from RAC, They are terrible if you have to call them out as they always send a man in a little van out even when you tell them that the fault cannot be fixed at the roadside. One instance when a head gasket blew on an Ariel I had the first visit with man in small van which wasted a couple of hours until a subcontractor turned up another 4 hours, six in total.... and I was less than 10 miles from home. I did not want to leave the bike at the roadside.
My CN insurance is due for renewal shortly so will have to consider options as over 6 hours for a local breakdown I dread to think how long a European one could take..
- Log in to post comments
Thank you Alan, very kind of…
Thank you Alan, very kind of you to still remember a rescue after all these years :-)
I used to be with the RAC for donkey's years until they refused to drop the price a few years ago. I used to pay just under £100 for husband and wife, driving any vehicle, and all the motorcycles. Glad to be shot of them now with their reputation today.
I am now with Green Flag, through the caravan and Motorhome club because I tow a caravan, and that is £112 for husband and wife, and up to six vehicles including motorcycles, roadside and recovery, but I only have to give the registration number for a lead vehicle.
For the car and motorcycle insurances I now try to have the 'free recovery' deleted and this is sometimes lumped in with extra personal insurance. On one policy I had £50 knocked off, but others wouldn't shift.
- Log in to post comments
Don't forget to check the small print!
Remember to check carefully for any restrictions with the cover. My RAC cover is courtesy of my bank account 'travel pack'. When I first needed to use it, I found out they didn't cover trailers!
Of course, I had to pay for extra cover to get the trailer puncture fixed.
Upon returning home, I checked the policy details and found it also had a vehicle age limit of 12 years! Of course, cover for older vehicles was available, but it was also at 'extra cost'.
After finding this out, I took out personal cover for my bikes instead.
The underlining moral: Go over each bike regularly and try and prevent the need to use these services!
Regards,
George
- Log in to post comments
Peter James Insurance
I switched from Carole Nash some time ago to Peter James who use AA recovery. I had to use their services twice.
Once when the inlet valve head let go on my 1913 Douglas out in the wilds of the Scottish Borders, once with a clutch failure on a Land Rover.
On both occasions recovery was commendably quick with the actual pick up being sub contracted to my local garage after the initial assessment by the man with the van.
- Log in to post comments
Letter sent to Carole Nash Insurance
Well, I've taken time to pen a brief letter to Carole Nash expressing my concerns about the RAC.
Many thanks to all who contributed their experiences to this thread, some of which I have referred to (No personal data disclosed) in my letter.
I've asked them some fairly basic but searching questions which I won't publish on here for now, pending their reply.
Cheers
Duncan Smith,
- Log in to post comments
Don't go to AA as an…
Don't go to AA as an alternative! They sent a spotty young man out to my OH car which wouldn't start...he spent an age pulling and prodding/measuring the battery etc, and left saying to OH it was the immobiliser. Had no clue. I got back just as he was finishing up....poor attitude indeed. Didn't like being challenged or checked as to what he'd done.
I went to wilkos on the off chance it was a battery issue in one of the remotes, started first time.
Pointless waste of space. Provided by Nationwide BS as part of their flex account offering....
- Log in to post comments
That's why...
... I dropped the paid for NW account. I've had unfortunate experiences with the AA in the past. And I used to be one of their patrols!
- Log in to post comments
... with my classic insurance. However I also have a comprehensive UK & EU, any vehicle any driver breakdown cover with Britannia.at around £140 / year (good rate as a Unison member). I've used them a few times to recover bikes - never Nortons of course - and they've been excellent. I've also used them a couple of times for the car and again excellent service. They send out a proper bike transport vehicle in the first place rather than what you describe with an initial useless visit from a patrol van. Most of the drivers have a good knowledge of bikes: in fact one told me what was wrong with a Honda merely by my describing the fault.
As it happens I also used to have a Nationwide paid for current bank account which included breakdown cover. This was initially provided by Britannia but I cancelled it when the provider changed to the AA.