AAA cancelled me

I am not sure if this was mentioned or not but it's the same for house insurance. A few years ago I had a tree blow over on my fence and I filed a home owners claim to repair it. That same year while having a fire in the fireplace, a big log rolled out onto the carpet and damaged it. I called my agent to see if that was covered and he was very nice explaining that was in the policy and that's what I was paying for. Shortly thereafter I received a letter from AAA stating if I filed one more home owners claim in a 12 month period I would be dropped. It's all about how many claims are filed in a given time period. I had a friend that had three fender bender is a 12 month period and her insurance dropped her. None were her fault.

I switched to Better World Club from AAA a decade or so ago, and they've been fine but I haven't been driving project cars much, so I've only had to call them 2-3 times, and fixed one while I was on hold.

The last one was a little annoying because they *just* changed to a call-and-we'll-text-you-a-web-link thing, and it was a bit of a clusterberkeley on my phone. Fortunately after fumbling with the site a bit I called back and the system sent me to a person. I still waited a couple of hours for a tow right in a suburb of Portland, but I think that's more the nature of staffing in 11/2021 than BWC.

This is basically an example of an insurance company forgetting the reason why people buy insurance. 

It's not just so we can send you checks every year. 

I use the Hagerty tow service.  They've been pretty good but I wanted to have the 911 towed to the shop after I'd installed the lower control arms and the alignment was all messed up.  I scheduled the tow the day before for 7:30am. 

The next morning the tow was going to come at 9:30.  So I called them and cancelled it.  I drove the car to the shop, dropped it off, waited for my Lyft and was halfway home when the tow company called me saying they'd be at my house in an hour.

Um, I cancelled the tow already?  Then Hagerty called me saying the tow company called them saying I'd cancelled it?  Yes, I called you guys over an hour ago and told you to cancel it.  Oh....

So it looks like service these days is just sorta hit and miss no matter what...

Writing letters is useless. Twitter and Facebook shaming is the way. 

I canceled AAA when they blacklisted two of my cars for being too frequently towed.  My insurance company offers roadside assistance for $15 every 6 months, and they're not whiny babies about it.  I get up to 20 miles free, gas free, jumpstarts free, flats changed free.  I think there are tiered levels where I can pay more for longer tows, but I just pay the difference if I tow farther than 20 miles.  I called once for a tow and after they hooked they called me all apologetic for not realizing it was a 32 mile tow and would have to charge me the difference.  I asked how much it would be and they gave it to me at cost which was something like $27.  Shut up and take my money.

AAA canceled my brother similarly, but I'm pretty sure that was because he called them a lot for a couple of years.

I stopped renewing my AAA about ten years ago because the service was so poor and the costs too high. Similar to Curtis, better to go through your car insurance usually.

amg_rx7 (Forum Supporter) said:

Writing letters is useless. Twitter and Facebook shaming is the way. 

For keyboard commando's, and whatever the current "cool" crowd calls itself these days, it probably is. But, I grew out of being a pre-teen a long time ago. 

amg_rx7 (Forum Supporter) said:

Writing letters is useless. Twitter and Facebook shaming is the way. 

I hate it, but I also think this is becoming increasingly true, at least with some companies. No meaningful support number, robo chat with useless and non-applicable options, but somehow all of a sudden someone has time to look into your problem when you @ them.

Moreover, I think some companies simply use that as a filter for access to higher-tier, more useful customer service staff. Don't waste them on people with normal problems, save them for the squeaky wheels. You just get stuck in IVR hell 'til you start telling the Twitterverse you're having a bad time.

It's not the approach I'd like to take as a customer, but if that's how it's done, it's nice to know how to actually get service when it's needed. I'll always try the normal way first if it exists.

I'm looking for any means to cut expenses right now. This thread just added my AAA membership to the chopping block. 

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

I'm looking for any means to cut expenses right now. This thread just added my AAA membership to the chopping block. 

I dropped them a few years ago when i found out my insurance company offers a roadside service plan. Worth every penny with Chubb. Havent had a single issue to date with the service and communication. 

Insurance companies and others who offer 'roadside assistance' programs usually use a tow dispatch service called Agero.

They suck.

AAA and Agero both pay crap rates, so tow companies either refuse to do the tow or put  you at the bottom of the list. The shop I worked at did AAA tows and we made no money on them. The best we could hope was that we'd get the repair job if the customer didn't have another destination in mind. The employer I currently have uses Agero and multiple hour waits are not uncommon. Sometimes they 'forget' to even come get you.

I honestly don't pay for any of these services. The number of times I've needed a tow have been minimal. I've figured out who the good local tow guys are and who charge King's Ransom rates. I just call the good guy and pay him cash. Still less than I'd have paid AAA all these years.

It's a little tougher if you're on a trip but with Google at your fingertips a few customer reviews will tell you what you  need to know.

03Panther said:

amg_rx7 (Forum Supporter) said:

Writing letters is useless. Twitter and Facebook shaming is the way. 

For keyboard commando's, and whatever the current "cool" crowd calls itself these days, it probably is. But, I grew out of being a pre-teen a long time ago. 

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with your statement.

I struggled for a year with getting Royal Caribbean to refund our fare on a cruise THEY canceled. Multiple multi-hour calls and many emails.

Called them out on Facebook, got immediate response, and had my money back within 10 days.

I remember David Freiburger saying that he got booted from AAA after being a member for something like 30 years, but that was because he was trying to get them to rescue him from a median when a tire blew on an AMC Gremlin and spun the Gremlin and the dead Prius he was flat-towing off into the desert. Apparently AAA was less than impressed with his antics and refused to send a rollback and then dropped his membership.

Oh yeah, AAA sucks now, it's a thing.

I locked my keys in my car at the racetrack and it took over an hour to get a truck there. When it arrived, the driver refused to sign the waiver required to enter the grounds. This is a local track and EVERYONE who enters has to sign the darn thing. Every local tow company knows this, the guy was being an a-hole. (My wife ran me out another set in the nick of time, an hour drive for her each way)

AAA's reaction was...nothing. I couldn't event get a return call the same day and all calls to customer service went nowhere. I got a survey email later and told them exactly what I thought about their crappy service and how they do nothing to police or monitor the companies they contract with. I am sure it was auto-deleted. 

Up yours AAA.  We had them for years.  During that time we made a couple of small claims on our house.  A few years later we looked at changing house insurance, got a better quote so signed up.  24 hours later we got a call 'Sorry, we cant' insure you after all, you have too many claims'.  WTF.  We call them and they say they checked with AAA and AAA said we had something like six claims in two years.  Call AAA and it tunes out they counted every time we called to inquire about a possible claim, that we never moved forward with either due to deductibles or we'd just cover it ourselves as we didn't want it on our insurance record.  And they refused to confirm the inquirers were just that and not claims to the other company.  

While bitching about insurance companies, USAA is permanently off our list too. As I mentioned the other day they tried to fob off my mid 80's father in law with a tiny payout on some significant damage.  We had to get legal with them and the final payout from them was over 20 times what they were trying to rip off an old man with, which would have left his house uninhabitable.

And that berkeleying lizard can berkeley off too for giving speed guns to the police for revenue generation and insurance denials.

Let's not talk about plug in OBD dongles to monitor your driving too.  They should be banned outright.

This sounds illegal. I know it's not, but it sounds like it. You pay a flat fee (and quite a substantial fee IMHO) for a service. That service allows you X occurrences in a given time frame, and each occurrence can be up to Y duration. You are paying for X and Y. You have used up to your maximum (PAID FOR) allowable services and, for that reason, they are dropping you?
Seriously, that makes NO SENSE at all. 
Their business model (should have) has this built-in. If every member uses the maximum benefit every year, they should still make a profit. If they don't, they screwed up the business model. I'm just blown away. I was considering AAA in the coming weeks. My decision has been made. No way am I getting AAA. I'll put the money to better use, like that Nigerian prince that contacted me via e-mail last week. Sounds less scammy than AAA. 

DrBoost said:

" If every member uses the maximum benefit every year, they should still make a profit."

I respectfully disagree with this statement. This would mean that the premium would need to be greater than the cost of the maximum benefit each year, and so there would be no point in buying the service.

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:

Let's not talk about plug in OBD dongles to monitor your driving too.  They should be banned outright.

Not having one of these in my 86 costs me about $200/yr, the tip of the iceberg of a horrendously expensive insurance policy. Of course if I did put one in the car it would eventually cost me even more...

Edit: Oh and I forgot, the berkeleyers actually wanted me to do this in the form of a phone app, you want to put surveillance software on my phone? Just charge me $200 to not have an insurance agent come over and slap me in the face, it's less insulting.

I do get some towing with the car insurance, I was thinking about changing to a CAA membership but now I'm having second thoughts.

DrBoost said:

This sounds illegal. I know it's not, but it sounds like it. You pay a flat fee (and quite a substantial fee IMHO) for a service. That service allows you X occurrences in a given time frame, and each occurrence can be up to Y duration. You are paying for X and Y. You have used up to your maximum (PAID FOR) allowable services and, for that reason, they are dropping you?
Seriously, that makes NO SENSE at all. 
Their business model (should have) has this built-in. If every member uses the maximum benefit every year, they should still make a profit. If they don't, they screwed up the business model. I'm just blown away. I was considering AAA in the coming weeks. My decision has been made. No way am I getting AAA. I'll put the money to better use, like that Nigerian prince that contacted me via e-mail last week. Sounds less scammy than AAA. 

See also: "Unlimited" Internet connections with data caps / site-specific cap exemptions.

A couple years ago, I got Good Sam roadside because of the motorhome and it's done a good job of covering the cars as well.  It's not as flexible as AAA on towing - they'll tow to the closest shop that can handle whatever vehicle it is but anything else means you pay the difference.  When I wanted the Excursion towed over to my shop from the house, they charged me $20 or $25 since my place wasn't the closest.  But, when the truck blew a tire and I didn't have a good spare, they called around on my behalf and found a tire store that had 4 of my size in stock and got them to agree to install them before they closed for the night.  All I had to do was wait on hold while the nice lady made some calls for me.  When I needed tires moved around on the RV while at the Rolex a couple years ago, it took them quite a while to get a truck sent out - like two days - but I wasn't in a hurry and they also weren't technically allowed to come on site to the Daytona campground since that's apparently a concession that someone has an exclusive contract for.  But they scheduled a time and came out and did it after some convinving with the guard shack.

When I had the roadside assistance with my insurance company (safeco), it was an absolute disaster.  I waited on the side of the road for a couple gallons of gas for 4 hours before my wife filled up a can and brought it to me instead.  She popped a tire once and waited for 3 hours in the cold raid before my brother came out to change it for her since I was in Florida at the time.  I wouldn't wish those jokers on anyone.

In reply to glyn ellis :

The thought would be AAA can get the tows at a lower rate than the consumer, so paying AAA more than their cost and expenses would still be cheaper than paying a tow guy.

But they do the insurance approach where one group subsidizes the other group and drop you when you move to the expensive group

I've had an AAA membership ever since I first got my license, so that's nearly 50 years.  On average I've probably used them twice a year - some years not at all, other years up to the maximum number.  I honestly can't recall ever having a bad experience with them.

The only thing aaa has that hasn't been mentioned, at least in california, is you can do some dmv transactions in their offices.  That's pretty convenient.  
 

in fact if it weren't for that, based on what I'm seeing, I'd be looking at other roadside assistance programs. 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

I once had a CAA membership.

 I got it as a gift and kept it for that year, but didn't renew because of terrible service. In 20 years of commuting in and out of the GTA I was never once tempted to get it again.