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30 Jul, 2003
It was brought to my attention today by a post on Ixion that the AA now has a policy of charging its members for recovery from the scene of an RTA. Now I've paid the AA annual membership subscriptions for nearly 10 years, and as someone whose main form of transport is a bike I consider accident recovery to be a particularly important factor. Why? Well a low-speed collision between two cars may result in nothing worse than some chipped paint and dented bodywork -- the same low-speed collision involving a bike could easily leave the bike in an unrideable condition.
So I wrote to the AA asking them whether or not this was the case, and whether or not they really thought this was appropriate action for an organisation that likes to call itself "the fourth emergency service". The reply (from the Customer Services department) did indeed confirm this policy:
Thank you for your e-mail.
I can confirm that in the event of a road traffic accident, we would always recommend that you contact your vehicle insurer in the first instance. Many insurance companies do have preferred recovery agents for use by their policy-holders in such situations.
If your insurer is happy for us to recover the vehicle, we will do so. However, this will incur a charge as per our terms and conditions (please see extract below).
There was also a copy of Clause 13 of their Terms and Conditions, which reiterates this. It's quite a new clause though, as I'd have noticed it ages ago otherwise.
Anyway the upshot is that I've written back to the AA telling them that due to this specific policy I'll be cancelling my membership with them once its current period runs out. After all there are plenty of other recovery organisations around these days, many of which are cheaper than the AA anyway, with higher customer satisfaction as well. If there are any other AA members -- or prospective members -- who think that this is a ridiculous clause (what are we paying them for if not for recovery service?), then please do as I did and let them know that they're losing customers due to it.
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