I cannot commend the Automobile Association (www.THEAA.com) enough.
Eventually, out of sheer exhaustion, one gets used to being fobbed off by people who don't know what they are talking about sitting in front of computers and thinking about home time when they are talking to you. For example I tried to get some sense out of a representative of one of the big banks, not First Direct, over the phone. It would have been more fun to pull my own teeth out with a pair of pliers!
You also wouldn't believe the amount of paperwork that some organisations computer systems generate and are forced to eat again at a later time, even when they are full of the same. Often they use the customer as the transfer mechanism between their systems. I think it is some strange way of introducing contingency into badly designed systems and the desire to share this with the customer.
However, back to the good news, did you know that if you are covered by the full breakdown service with the AA they will come out, be pleasant, do what needs doing and then whether you are aware or not, check your details to see if you are covered for a reduction for the parts they store in their recovery vehicle, that can bring your vehicle back to life.
As an example - Having had the car rebooted by the AA representative. I could have gone to Halfords and paid in the region of a hundred pounds for a new battery. I could have gone to Mercedes and probably paid considerably more for their service to do the same. Instead, the price was reduced to a mere £25 because we are covered for full recovery with the AA. What made the experience really special is that I had no idea that I was paying for full recovery, it is just one of the features of the payment I made sometime in the past. The availability of the feature of the product that I had purchased was confirmed by the company representative, without prompt. He used a phone, an augmented GPS system and a computer to pull all the information together without need for any paper, or me, in the process.
If the THEAA made cars I would go out and buy one tomorrow! I cannot think of many car companies that I would trust for the same kind of service that THEAA provides!
