I pit triple A

The BBQ Pit
1

Driving to a friend’s house this evening, quite suddenly, the pressure went out of my brakes. I was not in a place where i could safely pull over, so i carefully drive to their house, with my other hand on the parking brake, and miraculously found a parking spot across the road from their home. I parallel parked.

At 9:40 ish, i called triple A for a tow. The phone system suggested i use their app. So at 9:41 i did so.

The app took my info, and said a truck would arrive at 10:41

So at 10:35, i went outdoors to wait.

At 11:15 i got impatient, and called to ask what was up. Oh, the system rejected your address. But i can try to give your information to the dispatcher now.

Do you have any idea how long it will be? No. I finally asked how long she thought i should wait before calling back. She suggested half an hour.

That had been a long call, so at around midnight i called again. I waited on hold interminably. Anyway, it’s now 1, and they still have no idea how long i might wait. But no, they can’t schedule a tow for the morning. They can arrange an unattended tow, or i can try to find someone else to tow the car (after midnight) and bill them. Or i can cancel the request and start over in the morning.

The unattended tow seems tricky. The mechanic is sort of a subcontractor at a gas station, and only “owns” a couple of parking spots. There no way i can leave a message that’s going to get the car in a legal place. And I’m dubious about them breaking into my car and unparking it, too, although honestly, they probably do that all the time, and that’s probably fine.

So I’m crashing in the guest bedroom, turning off my phone’s “do not disturb”, and writing this rant.

2

At my old job working water damage mitigation, we had an answering service (and apparently not a very good one, as will soon be shown). We had this because we provided 24-hour service.

Turns out one of the other clients of this answering service was AAA. Somehow, they forwarded a call from AAA to our on-call phone. Our tech didn’t know what to make of the customer’s issue (flat tire, what?) so he gave the phone to me.

This AAA customer had been on a series of consecutive holds lasting nearly an hour, only to end up on the line with a water damage mitigation provider. Suffice to say she was apoplectic. She loosed several choice obscenities then hung up. Absolutely could not blame her.

I think your experience with AAA really stinks because they’re the sort of company you really, really need to “just work” when you call their phone number. Being able to provide at least that little bit of peace of mind goes a long way toward making someone in a stressful situation feel like things might be OK.

3

I did manage not to curse the phone operator. The underlying problem is unlikely to be her fault.

If I’d reached a water mitigation damage operator… I dunno. I probably would have cursed.

4

I’m sorry to hear of your flat tire and bad experience, puzzlegal.

I don’t want to add to your bad day, but I followed this thread from your IMHO post on the Pit. I don’t think this needed to go in the Pit. Wouldn’t it be fine in MPSIMS?

Anyway, I hope your car issues get sorted out and you get some rest.

5

AAA is a scam. You will not get a return on your investment.

I remember one time my car broke down because of overheating. It could not be driven and I had to call for a tow truck to take it to my dealership to fix it. (It ended up being a simple fix; a belt broke and had to be replaced.) My dad’s wife (not my mom, he remarried) commented that if I had AAA, they would have towed my car for free.

I then asked her how much she pays for AAA, and she said it was something like $150 a year. I then said that the towing company charged me less than than to tow my car, and I had owned my car for more than a decade and this was the first time it needed to be towed.

The sad thing is that she is an accountant. :tired_face:

6

I pay like $55/year for AAA. It easily pays for itself with hotel discounts.

7

I think mine is under $100 for 2 people. It was $59 or something and I upgraded. Unless they changed something, it goes with the person and not any specific vehicle, so I’ve found myself in a few situations where it came in handy. I used it once to avoid getting extorted by the backwoods tow guy the local police use (it’s bad enough when you are the victim of an accident and then have to deal with getting extorted by redneck cops and their boys, but that’s another story) and another time when my transmission went out. Provides peace of mind for my wife who has anxiety so bad she pretty much shuts down and checks out of life when anything happens. Dollar for dollar, might lose a little bit over time if I keep renewing forever.

8

They called me back at 3am to say they still can’t find anyone to tow the car. Hey, maybe you NOW want to do an unattended tow?

9

Now the driver has one more job, and then will come pick me up.

(4:40)

10

Huh? If they can’t find a tow, how do they explain the unattended tow?

Sounds like the only tow they can scare up is an inexperienced tower who wants no witnesses or liability.

11

Yeah, that’s what i was wondering about. Or maybe, “we’ll find a tow in a couple of days”

But miabile dictu, they have assigned a driver, and he’s supposed to arrive in 12 minutes.

(5:27am)

12

No, this is a fucking rant, and does not belong in MPSIMS. In some hypothetical other world it could go in some other forum. In some hypothetical other world AAA picked me up at 10:45 last night, too.

13

So, there I was driving in the middle of nowhere Canada about an hour and a half away from my vacation destination when a deer decided to shuffle off this mortal coil and jump in front of my car. I was fine. Neither the car nor the deer survived the encounter. I’d had AAA about a month at that time - CAA (they had a partnership) hauled it (and me) the rest of the way to my destination (they offered to take it further to a city rather than the small town where I was staying, but I needed time to think and figure out what to do. I was shaken up couldn’t think clearly about what to do with a totaled car in another country several hours from home.)

That alone paid for that year and several future years’ dues (which for me have been under $100/year and I have something above the base level tier). Since then, I’ve had other incidents where I’ve found it useful to call AAA. I also usually easily rack up $100/year in discounts, but YMMV.

So far, though, I’ve been lucky and never needed AAA when everyone else does or been routed into phonetree hell when calling them. That would suck.

14

AAA in California (CAA) is very good. In the 40 years we were with them we only needed them a handful of times – but we really needed them. A dog who locked himself into a car on a hot day with the keys inside. Engine blown on the freeway 50 miles from home. Neighbor’s kids shot out our windshield for fun. Etc. They also competently and quickly handled all the other car insurance/registration needs.

We have had nothing but jaw-dropping incompetence and stupidity from AAA in Massachusetts. We finally quit them. But it is of a piece with the other bureaucracies we’ve encountered here. We were accustomed to competence in California, and it has been a shock how shoddy the services are here. I do not know why this is so.

15

Like most such things that can loosely fall into the category of insurance, on average it’s not tipped in your favor. Though that does not make it a scam and can offer some benefit, and for most is peace of mind. And that’s peace of mind is worth enough to me that I like their service.

It’s not only a one call number, it’s also I’m not going to get ripped off by a tow guy, it’s also I know what the deal is, I have 100 miles of towing included so I know if I have to tow to a nearby garage or perhaps I can tow my car home and do the work myself (I frequently travel 60 miles from home, and in the winter just over that 100 mile mark). If I were to pay out of pocket I would most likely not even ask about long distance towing to get the car home. It’s also my SO, if she were to have problems could also has those options.

And those discounts do popup in unexpected places, sometimes it’s the only hotel discount available for me, and a autoparts store offers it too. I would WAG I make up at least 1/2 the price of the membership on discounts that I don’t specifically even look for, but even so a $10/night AAA discount at a hotel can add up fast on a multi day trip, so I suspect it may even be higher.

16

I’ve had AAA for a decade, second tier with the 125-mi towing range,* and used it a number of times. The only trouble I’ve had was a live dispatcher who insisted on an address in the middle of nowhere, Nevada (“I’m 20 miles from Indian Springs and 40 from Beatty – take your pick.”) and a robodispatcher that didn’t allow nuances.

It was a flat tire in a parking lot and when the driver arrived I explained it was likely a nail because it had been fine when I’d parked there an hour before. “How about I just fill it?”

“Works for me; there’s a Pep Boys two miles away. I just couldn’t covey that to the robot.”

“I hear ya.”

17

Like Ulfrieda I live in California, and I’ve had AAA for around 50 years. I’ve always had a long commute, and I travel up and down the state a lot (often alone), so the peace of mind has been great for me. Thankfully, I’ve also had no issues at all. Once, I broke down alone in the middle of the night, and the operator thought the neighborhood was sketchy enough that she offered to stay on the phone with me until the tow guy got there. I was touched by that, but was fine with her hanging up.

You can also renew your registration in a AAA office (get your sticker too) although I do that online now, but in the old days, the AAA office was always easier than the DMV.

As long as I’m passing out compliments, I’d like to shoutout the Metro freeway help guys, too. Great service and really efficient. I know their main concern is keeping the freeways running freely, but it’s nice when they’re pleasant and competent.

puzzlegal, are you home yet???

18

Yes, thanks, i got home a little after did in the morning. En route, i learned that the mechanic i had them tow my car to is on vacation until July 15th, but i guess i can get along without the car until then. And that’s not their fault.

It is the fault of the idiot dispatcher to call me at 3am to tell me she had no information, though, after i told her i was crashing at a friend’s house and asked if they couldn’t just schedule a tow for 7 in the morning. No, her supervisor won’t let her schedule a tow. But bitch, you KNOW i have a bed here, and I’m probably sleeping. If you actually had a tow, sure, I’ll get up and get home. But you woke me up to ask yet again if i wouldn’t prefer an unaccompanied tow? Seriously?

19

Have I ever seen a AAA commercial in my life? I don’t know, but there’s one on right now as I’m reading this thread.
We’ve always had good experiences with them, including one Christmas night when Mom locked her keys in the car.

20

I have towing coverage through my regular auto insurance policy. It adds about $4 a month. I’ve used it 4 times with no issues. The only downside is that it’s tied to the car, not the person, so it doesn’t cover me in any other vehicle, but it will cover somebody else driving my vehicle without me present. With AAA, I had to be present at my car when it broke down on my daughter far from home.