My wife and I broke down on the slip road from the M4 on to the M25. I alerted the Highways Agency and called RAC. I was unaware that my MOT had recently lapsed, so was obliged to pay an extra £850 for them to attend.
We waited on the embankment in wind and rain. We are in our 80s. Fortunately, a highways patrol pulled up and provided a shield so we could sit safely in our car.
Four hours later, with no estimated arrival time from RAC, the highways officer drove us, and our two dogs, to a service station, leaving the car on the road.
We couldn’t get food or shelter in the service station because dogs were not allowed so, after another hour in the rain, I paid £250 for a taxi to take us home. Our car was eventually returned to us at 2.30am.
If a highways officer had not helped us, we would have spent the night on the embankment and probably suffered hypothermia.
MG, Berkeley, Gloucestershire
You wrote in response to my report on a driver who was stranded for 13 hours by the RAC. The experience of BHF of Holsworthy, Cornwall beats both. He had to spend the night in his car when it broke down in a remote part of Scotland.
“I was told a patrol would take up to four hours, but none came,” he writes. “A recovery vehicle eventually arrived after eight hours. It was 12.30am. The driver informed me my car was too ‘overweight’ to recover and left.” He was forced to sleep in his vehicle.
A second similar-sized recovery truck reached him at 1pm the following afternoon, nearly 21 hours after his first call. It had no trouble carrying his car.
The RAC offered £100 in goodwill, which he rejected, then advised him to complain to the Financial Services Ombudsman. Nine weeks later, he was told by the latter that breakdown recovery complaints were outside its remit.
The RAC offers a vital service for which drivers are expected to pay handsomely, yet complaints such as these suggest that it lacks sufficient vehicles and mechanics to cope.
The impact on motorists left at the roadside can be severe. It’s a scandal, therefore, that successful lobbying by the sector got roadside recovery operations exempted from the Financial Services Act 2000.
This means that, while selling breakdown policies is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, the execution is not, so stranded motorists can’t complain to the ombudsman. The RAC knows this, yet sent BHF on a wild goose chase.
The RAC says its performance has been affected by deteriorating weather, a shortage of HGV drivers, supply chain issues and closures of partner recovery firms. It adds: “When dealing with multiple millions of breakdowns there will be times when things don’t go to plan. We apologise to all your readers where our service has fallen short of the standards they would reasonably expect of us.” It says the first mechanic who went to BHF had not made it known his car had not been recovered, and that it would agree a “suitable gesture” of goodwill.
The company blames MG for the lapsed MOT despite having been happy to pocket an extra £850 to act. “Unfortunately, there were delays in the contractor arriving which were out of our control, so we are now looking to agree an appropriate gesture of goodwill,” it says.
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