Trouble

An early blip (for me anyway) today................all caused by this car.

Shortly before I left the house last night to go to what (I understand) was an excellent lecture by atop nature photographer I got a phone call from a friend who was also heading there.

Her car was making a very strange noise and 'feeling funny' (don't you just love womens decriptions of mechanics) so I headed off to see what she was on about.

Turns out the suspension had broken and was rubbing on the tyre.

Needless to say she wasn't a member of any breakdown/recovery organisation.

She had to phone up and join (the AA at a whacking premium.

She told them she was a woman on her own in a strange town and she was told that she would be uplifted withing an hour.

Being the gent that I am (stop sniggering) I said I would wait with her...I could always catch the second half of the lecture.

2 HOURS later a recovery truck turned up and told her that she was only being taken to the nearest garage......turned out that she had only been given the most basic of cover and never given any other choice.

Whilst the car was being loaded there were calls made complaining and asking for help - during which the phone battery was dying - which they were told about. There were calls going between my friend, the AA, the garage, the truck driver...........

In the end the car and my friend were taken to the local garage - in a small industrial area in a not too nice part of town - as the car was being offloaded she got a call to say that as a 'Good Will' gesture the AA were sending another vehicle to take her home.............in an hour.

So they were quite happy to adandon a single woman (with a dead phone by this point) on her own as a gesture of good will. I hate to think what they would do if they were feeling nasty.


I took her home.............and first thing this morning went down and made sure the garage were going to repair the car...........and will collect her from the station and get her to work this afternoon.

So - the moral of the story is DON'T JOIN THE AA.









PS - the guy in the garage told me that last week, at night a woman broke down on the motorway, phoned the AA, was towed off the motorway and dumped at a filling station and then billed £150


EDIT I have just found out that the garage are trying to charge an arm and a leg so the car is being towed to Kwik Fit who are going to do more work (and the tow) for less cash