The RAC: the oldest motoring organisation in the country. They claim to have more patrols per member than any other breakdown provider. Because, they claim, every journey is important. Or is it? Dom Littlewood reports.
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Don't you just hate it when your car breaks down? You're in a rush, you're in a strange place and you need an expert - which is exactly why people join a breakdown organisation like the RAC. They pay their money, so they expect the RAC to be there for them in times of stress.
But that isn't always the case. Just ask Leslie Asher; his car engine cut out on the M60. When he called the RAC, they didn't recognise him on their system. It took several phone calls over the course of 30 minutes to convince them he was a member. He then waited two and a half hours on a freezing February night until someone from the RAC arrived.
Then there's Max Gilbert, whose clutch cable broke. He called the RAC on the premium rate number, was put on hold for ten minutes and subsequently ran out of credit on his phone. He pushed his motorcycle across town to call RAC from a landline. His call was eventually answered, and Max was told that someone would be out to him within the hour.
But they weren't. A mechanic took 90 minutes to arrive, but it was the wrong type of mechanic with the wrong equipment to fix motorcycles. It took a total of three and a half hours until Max was properly helped by the RAC.
Then there's 18-year-old Honor Freeman who broke down on the M11. It took the RAC repair-man nearly 90 minutes to arrive, and when he did, Honor ended up having to pay £30 to upgrade her membership to get towed back to her mother's house. However, this wasn't quite as resolved as it seemed. Honor explains: "[...] about ten minutes into the journey he got a call from what I assume was his boss on loudspeaker saying 'What are you doing?' He was like 'I'm just dropping her home' and she was like 'Why are you doing that?' She said 'Either get her to pay the £155 or drop her off at the next layby'."
The RAC later admitted the Patrol Man should not have offered the upgrade, and that the assistance centre had told him to drop Honor in a safe place. Instead, he dropped her in the nearest lay-by. Naturally, Honor was scared, having been stranded at 8pm at night in a place she didn't know. Her mother, Pauline was frantic and it took her an hour before she finally found Honor.
As for Heather Bentley; her car handbrake broke while her daughter Rebecca was driving to the Lake District. The RAC's advice? The car was mechanically sound to drive and their advice was to drive it to the nearest garage which was over 10 miles away. Driving without a working handbrake is not only unsafe, it's illegal. Under the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, all parts of your braking system need to be in working order.
So while the RAC's adverts may claim to be 'Close To You', these stories suggest that they might want to rethink that lyric...
Neil Thompson, Operations Director, RAC states:
As a company that prides itself on the service we provide to our members when they need our help, we take these cases extremely seriously. We are constantly trying to improve our service, and feedback from our members is invaluable to us in that process. However, we fully accept that in these four cases the service our members received was not in line with our usual high standards and we need to take learning from this and improve what we do going forward. I have personally written to each of these customers to offer our sincerest apologies.
The four concerns highlighted have occurred within the last 6 months during which time we have received over 1.7 million breakdown calls and our patrols have helped over 1 million customers. Our average time to attend during this period is just under 48 minutes and the number of upheld complaints equates to 0.27% of the customers we have attended.
Miss Freeman's experience clearly fell short of what our members should expect when calling for help from RAC. On this occasion our Patrol should only have offered to tow Miss Freeman as part of a pay-on-use service. However, having made the mistake of upgrading her cover while broken down, we should have honoured the recovery commitment and we are very sorry that Miss Freeman was left to make her own arrangements. Our policy of not offering roadside upgrades has not changed.
Mrs Bentley clearly received inaccurate advice that was not in line with our normal strict guidance and procedures. Ensuring our members always comply with legislation is of paramount importance to us and our technicians receive a high level of training to avoid such incidents - this mistake has been addressed with the individual and communicated to all our technicians.
Since the incident involving Mr Asher in February 2011, we have changed the way we help members who have broken down on a motorway. We will now attend first and validate the membership once we know they are safe.
Regarding Mr Gilbert's complaint, we are sorry that he suffered such delays. We work constantly to ensure we answer calls from our members promptly and that they are regularly updated and attended as quickly as possible with the correct resource, first time. In this case, although our established deployment procedure was followed this did not result in the right resource being dispatched to Mr Gilbert. We will be reviewing the process to see what improvements can be made.
In all of these cases we have clearly let our members down, for which we sincerely apologise. Since these concerns have been brought to our attention we have acted promptly to understand the reasons for each complaint, and are using the lessons learnt to avoid these mistakes happening in the future.
RAC: do they go the extra mile?
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
Don't you just hate it when your car breaks down? You're in a rush, you're in a strange place and you need an expert - which is exactly why people join a breakdown organisation like the RAC. They pay their money, so they expect the RAC to be there for them in times of stress.
But that isn't always the case. Just ask Leslie Asher; his car engine cut out on the M60. When he called the RAC, they didn't recognise him on their system. It took several phone calls over the course of 30 minutes to convince them he was a member. He then waited two and a half hours on a freezing February night until someone from the RAC arrived.
Then there's Max Gilbert, whose clutch cable broke. He called the RAC on the premium rate number, was put on hold for ten minutes and subsequently ran out of credit on his phone. He pushed his motorcycle across town to call RAC from a landline. His call was eventually answered, and Max was told that someone would be out to him within the hour.
But they weren't. A mechanic took 90 minutes to arrive, but it was the wrong type of mechanic with the wrong equipment to fix motorcycles. It took a total of three and a half hours until Max was properly helped by the RAC.
Then there's 18-year-old Honor Freeman who broke down on the M11. It took the RAC repair-man nearly 90 minutes to arrive, and when he did, Honor ended up having to pay £30 to upgrade her membership to get towed back to her mother's house. However, this wasn't quite as resolved as it seemed. Honor explains: "[...] about ten minutes into the journey he got a call from what I assume was his boss on loudspeaker saying 'What are you doing?' He was like 'I'm just dropping her home' and she was like 'Why are you doing that?' She said 'Either get her to pay the £155 or drop her off at the next layby'."
The RAC later admitted the Patrol Man should not have offered the upgrade, and that the assistance centre had told him to drop Honor in a safe place. Instead, he dropped her in the nearest lay-by. Naturally, Honor was scared, having been stranded at 8pm at night in a place she didn't know. Her mother, Pauline was frantic and it took her an hour before she finally found Honor.
As for Heather Bentley; her car handbrake broke while her daughter Rebecca was driving to the Lake District. The RAC's advice? The car was mechanically sound to drive and their advice was to drive it to the nearest garage which was over 10 miles away. Driving without a working handbrake is not only unsafe, it's illegal. Under the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, all parts of your braking system need to be in working order.
So while the RAC's adverts may claim to be 'Close To You', these stories suggest that they might want to rethink that lyric...
Neil Thompson, Operations Director, RAC states:
As a company that prides itself on the service we provide to our members when they need our help, we take these cases extremely seriously. We are constantly trying to improve our service, and feedback from our members is invaluable to us in that process. However, we fully accept that in these four cases the service our members received was not in line with our usual high standards and we need to take learning from this and improve what we do going forward. I have personally written to each of these customers to offer our sincerest apologies.
The four concerns highlighted have occurred within the last 6 months during which time we have received over 1.7 million breakdown calls and our patrols have helped over 1 million customers. Our average time to attend during this period is just under 48 minutes and the number of upheld complaints equates to 0.27% of the customers we have attended.
Miss Freeman's experience clearly fell short of what our members should expect when calling for help from RAC. On this occasion our Patrol should only have offered to tow Miss Freeman as part of a pay-on-use service. However, having made the mistake of upgrading her cover while broken down, we should have honoured the recovery commitment and we are very sorry that Miss Freeman was left to make her own arrangements. Our policy of not offering roadside upgrades has not changed.
Mrs Bentley clearly received inaccurate advice that was not in line with our normal strict guidance and procedures. Ensuring our members always comply with legislation is of paramount importance to us and our technicians receive a high level of training to avoid such incidents - this mistake has been addressed with the individual and communicated to all our technicians.
Since the incident involving Mr Asher in February 2011, we have changed the way we help members who have broken down on a motorway. We will now attend first and validate the membership once we know they are safe.
Regarding Mr Gilbert's complaint, we are sorry that he suffered such delays. We work constantly to ensure we answer calls from our members promptly and that they are regularly updated and attended as quickly as possible with the correct resource, first time. In this case, although our established deployment procedure was followed this did not result in the right resource being dispatched to Mr Gilbert. We will be reviewing the process to see what improvements can be made.
In all of these cases we have clearly let our members down, for which we sincerely apologise. Since these concerns have been brought to our attention we have acted promptly to understand the reasons for each complaint, and are using the lessons learnt to avoid these mistakes happening in the future.
RAC: do they go the extra mile?