My car became non-functional somewhere a bit north of Osoyoos, BC. Which, if you’ve never been anywhere near there, is in the middle of nothing. They towed it 50 miles north for me.
I love AAA Plus.
AAA Gold has saved my ass too many times to count. The most notable was when I was outside the smallest town in Florida (pop. 400) at 1 am. I was 1500 miles from home and blew out two tires. I needed to be in Gainesville the next morning. They sent a flatbed truck to pick me and my SUV up and drove me there (distance: 93 miles). Then they located a tire store that could fix it right away and dropped my SUV off. I slept in the large truck on the way there. They made sure I was safe and comfortable and everything was fixed by 10 am. I am a huge fan of AAA for lots of reasons. Most people have no idea how many discounts you can get with one of their cards. My prescription drug coverage recently got screwed up and I had to pay for several expensive meds for the family out of pocket. I told the clerk what happened and she asked if I have AAA which I do. Poof, instant $50 savings. You can do that stuff all over the place if you are aggressive and shameless about it.
I have a Visa Signature credit card. According to the literature and the website, it includes tow services. I haven’t needed a tow in years, so I have no idea how good the service is, but I did put the phone number on my cell phone just in case.
I think the big reasons people used to join AAA were the tow services, the maps and travel planning assistance and possibly the auto insurance. Cars are so reliable now that it’s really rare to need a tow and you can get maps online that are comparably to the AAA trip-tiks. So unless you want their insurance, I see no reason to join AAA at this point.
You are sorely mistaken on that point. You don’t have to own a junker to need a tow. You may need just to have damaged or stuck cars moved around. They will move your car from one mechanic to another for you if you want or even from one house to another. They will pull you out of ditches during a winter storm or even take care of a guest at your dinner party if there is any type of problem. All of those things have happened to me and some several times. Maybe I am unusual but I don’t think so. It tends to some up a couple of times a year. You don’t have to own the car or even be the driver. You just need to be there when the truck shows up. The most recent one was when a guest parked in a very wet spot next to our house and we could not get their car unstuck after they tried to leave after 30 minutes of trying. I called AAA and they took care of it within the next 30 minutes.
USAA - best company ever, but you have to either have served in the military or have a family member who has served to become a member. I was able to get membership through my mother who was in the Army.
I have been with the Allstate Motor Club for over 20 years, I have used there services about a dozen times and never a dime out of my pocket. It originally came free when I bought some tires from Sears.
Another good thing about auto clubs is that you can generally use your membership card as a bond card instead of handing over you driver’s license when you get a traffic ticket. This can be a lifesaver, as I found out when I got a ticket three days before I had to get on a plane. I probably could have made it through security without my ID (I didn’t have a passport at the time), but it would have been a big hassle.
I agree that USAA is the best company ever. I have my car, home and life insurance through them. Do they have stuff similar to AAA too? If so, I did not know that. Maybe I need to look at my auto policy a bit closer, or add AAA-like services to it and drop AAA.
Jeez that’s a lot of “AAA’s”!
Aside from the actual service, one reason a lot of people dislike AAA is they find out how much AAA spends on lobbying for issues only vaguely related to roadside assistance. For instance, AAA lobbies hard against environmental regulation in general, against spending on mass transit, against fuel efficiency standards, and pretty much for anything that benefits auto and oil companies. [Wiki cite)
That’s part of the reason Better World Club was started.
Uh, duh. It is an automobile association, a club as it were, responsible to its members, people who presumably want to drive and enjoy their cars. It’s not a commercial, “roadside assistance company.” Roadside assistance is one of the member benefits (among many others) – not the end.
They also lobby for better driver education, young driver education, and good things in addition to the ones you already mentioned.
So is the (UK) AA, but it campaigns for socially conscious stuff as well as “driver’s rights” - it was responsible for the UK’s unleaded gasoline switch and seatbelt law, for example.
Huh. That seems to be contradictory on their part. They lobby against things like mass transit and fuel efficency but not for things that benefit auto and oil industries? Industries they’re in bed with by association with the automobile?
Weird.
Another data point. I submitted a check request for a $1265 dollar tow the other week. Good customer, just had his car in the shop, and it broke down on the Eastern side of the Sierras. Local shop could not even spell Volvo. I could not state for a fact if it was our guy’s fault or not, so I agreed to pay the bill.
BTW the $1265 was after the 100 mile deduct for AAA plus.
Well they have great roadside assistance. Once I broke down in the desert, literally in the middle of the night, hundreds of miles from real civilization. The initial tow truck that was going to come out for me updated their status to say it would be about 8 hours (until morning) before they could reach me. The USAA rep called me back and said “screw that, we’re not going to make you wait 8 hours” and managed to wake someone up in this tiny podunk town to get out to me within about 30-40 minutes. It was incredible.
Most of the people in this thread seem to be talking about the roadside assistance, and USAA definitely beats them in that - is there another benefit they have that you are using them for?
I did say that AAA lobbies for oil companies, but I admit it might have been clearer on my part to move the ‘for’ and add another ‘lobbies’, so that it read
“AAA lobbies hard against environmental regulation in general, against spending on mass transit, against fuel efficiency standards, and lobbies for pretty much anything that benefits auto and oil companies.”
Yes, but most people --certainly everyone I know who’s had a membership – has joined only for the roadside assistance (and perhaps also the maps as a minor benefit). Nobody I know – and I suspect very few people overall – have joined because they want more advocacy for automobiles and driving. To the extent that AAA markets themselves as a roadside assistance organization and downplays or conceals their lobbying, that’s dishonest.
But, whether or not there’s any deliberate misleading by AAA, that is why Better World was formed – to provide roadside assistance for people who don’t also want lobbying for more roads and driving and against mass transit and a clean environment.
And higher fuel efficiency is to the benefit of motorists, on multiple levels. But the current lobbying position of the AAA is on the verge of global warming denial, as they maintain that higher CAFE standards would have no ecological benefit, or at least none worth the cost.