We’ve booked tours at pretty decent rates with AAA in the past. We like knowing that if someone tries to rip us off or there’s a screw-up, they need to answer to a large corporation whose business they want to keep.
@2outa3
Please post the results if you decide to investigate. I get it if you don’t care enough to bother, but me? I’m just too nosy! I’d have to find out! LOL
Me too.
Me too. In part because I have been a AAA member for about 20 years, and I used to obsess over whether I was receiving a bill and paying it on time, until I finally got it on autopay and eventually realized that yes, I no longer needed to worry about it.
Now I hardly look at the mail they send, since most of it is advertising life insurance policies I don’t want to buy. But the membership seems to be there whenever I need it. (Which is almost never, but I had a dead car battery and a flat tire within a month of each other a year or two ago; both times they bailed me out with no hassle.)
Like I, and others, have said, call them and report back. It is useful information to the rest of us that use AAA. Otherwise, it’s just specualation and I don’t understand the point of this thread.
I agree, but it looks like you misspelled @2outta3’s name so they might not see this request.
This is funny! Or not…
Right, like maybe the OP has been with AAB all this time and never noticed. 
This had become my favorite soap opera, but it’s become too suspenseful. I keep checking back to see if AAA would apologize, or reply with a recording of Maggie Smith intoning “We just don’t think you’re our kind of people…”
How about it, @2outta3 ? Maybe a quick call, or take thirty seconds to email them one sentence?
Some of us don’t do well with suspense!
I was thinking AAA: Anthony’s Automobile Association.
Yep, you’re correct, but I got 6outta7 characters right! LOL
AAA itself concedes
I have no trouble believing the OP’s claim. Each regional AAA entity has its own rules for providing services and its own prices.
Four years ago my car made a funny sound and simply died; I was able to steer into a parking lot. I called my AAA entity–of which I’d been a paying member for decades–and was told “30 minutes”. An hour later I was told “delays…another 25 minutes.”
This went on for FIVE HOURS.
Yes, perhaps I was stupid to believe their repeated assurances of “20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes.” But then again: it was AAA! They are known to be reliable! A good purchase!
After five hours, apparently, an accidentally-honest person was on the line and told me that if my car wasn’t actually on a busy highway, they probably wouldn’t be able to send help. “WHY NOT TELL ME THAT AT THE BEGINNING?”, I thought, was a reasonable response. (I had to call a towing service and pay for it myself.)
Needless to say, when renewal time for the AAA membership rolled around, I declined to pay.
For the first three years after I dropped them I got many mailings and emails touting the Wonderful Benefits. I ignored them. This past year they started offering me the Wonderful Benefits for half the price for the first year (for this particular AAA entity, $37.50 instead of $75). At the end of May, I bit.
It was a huge hassle. Online, they wouldn’t offer the $37.50 price. I had to phone. They took the payment info and assured me a card would be sent to me.
It turned out that even though they took my money on May 23, they won’t honor the membership until JULY 1.
So, yeah: AAA differs in different regions of the country. In some regions they treat customers well. In others, apparently because they CAN, they treat customers like dirt.
I have no problem believing the OP’s claims.
…
Additional info: when I called four years ago, I had called only ONCE in the preceding 20 years—for a dead battery at my home. They came with a truck equipped with several batteries, one of which they sold me, presumably at a profit. So I was NOT a ‘problem customer’ in any respect. It’s just that the particular regional AAA where I live has tons of customers and not much competition—so they can treat us like dirt with no consequences to their bottom line.
This is true. Wikipedia has a list of the regional clubs, and what territory they cover is almost random and actually kind of weird. There are, I think, four clubs covering Ohio, for instance but other clubs cover multiple states.
That’s right. We all tend to think of AAA as a national entity, and it does have some national aspects. But all the regional clubs have differing policies on pricing and on what services they will cover.
That should inform any judgments on what a particular person might report about their experience with AAA.
I found that out the hard way when I moved to Ohio from Florida last year. The Florida (Southeast) region had been offering gift cards which would give you a discount on your yearly bill (AAA Dollars). I had bought over $1,000 of the things over the previous year (2022). I moved here, and went in to renew, NOT knowing that the membership wasn’t national per se…
They had no idea what AAA Dollars were, nor did they sell a single lousy gift card anywhere in their branches. Needless to say those ~$60 imaginary dollars went to join all the little people in the cornfield. I technically didn’t lose anything per se, but it was just this Balkanized crap where one region can have this wonderful idea, but no other regions ever hear of it and thus never pick it up either.
And I bet they didn’t apologize, either.
The reputation AAA has for being a national company is unfounded, unfair, and misleading. I have no doubt that you are not alone in having run afoul of it.
Just pled ignorance, like I said. Ohio is also c. 20-30 bucks more expensive, so I went from an anticipated $40 bill to a $140 one. The SE Region when I called them said they could do nada with the bucks I had accumulated, since that membership technically was no more.
Well, if they don’t want to have a reputation as a national organization, they could drop the American Automobile Association name and instead each regional club could market itself separately.
And NONE of this information is available online, I’m guessing. No ‘better use those AAA dollars before you move to another area served by an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT club’ or any such warning.
I won’t say AAA is a scam. But I will say that the image they present (as being a national entity) is false, and that they know this and are deliberately misleading about it in many of their promotions and claims.
That would certainly be the honest approach.