It can save money, but doesn’t save time, IME.
If I call a locksmith or wrecker direct, they will be out fairly promptly. If I get AAA to do so, it’s usually a much longer wait.
You can ask the service if they take AAA, and if they do, it is still covered, even if you make the call.
I haven’t used them in 20+ years since my parents stopped paying for my membership, so maybe they’ve gotten better.
this is the second time I’ve linked to Caitlin Doughty in as many days. Good info and presentation. And fun if you’re a bit ghoulish.
Maybe it varies with location, but when I call AAA the truck arrives surprisingly fast.
I’ve needed a tow once in 25+ years of driving a vehicle. I’ve never needed any of those other services. If I was paying a AAA membership all those years, that’s money down the drain.
Now, if AAA cost $4 a year, then it would have paid for that $100 tow I needed once.
I love the SD. Started out talking funerals, now we’re on AAA.
There’s an opportunity here - combine them! Have AAA cart off the dead folks! I’d sign up for that. Tow trucks are way cooler than hearses.
Wow. Never a flat tire or dead battery? You’re living a charmed life, hope it continues like that.
I had my kids on the plan. From age 16 to 25 they got a lot of use from it. A lot. Plus, pretty cheap peace of mind knowing they wouldn’t be trying to change a tire on the interstate some night. I think I only used it once for myself, (dead battery at the airport) but my cars are newer and don’t break down. And I can’t lock my keys inside. Also, we get hotel discounts that probably more than make up for the annual fee.
I had a flat tire once, and changed it myself. (That’s why you always have a spare and a jack.) I’ve needed a jump start a few times, but that’s what jumper cables are for.
And I haven’t locked myself out of the car, ever. I keep spare keys literally attached to me at all times. My current car I can unlock remotely from my smart phone if it ever came to that (but I haven’t ever had to do that).
Being prepared and responsible can save you a whole crap ton of money.
Ahhh, see I prefer to pay the membership fee and make the phone call. Sure, I can change a tire or get a jump, but I’d rather not get my hands dirty/work in the rain or cold/etc.
/hijack, may it rest in peace.
Me too - and a large part of how I’ve gotten my money’s worth is never having to worry about getting a call to go wherever my husband or son got stranded and bring the spare key or gas or give them a jump. Because in the absence of AAA or something similar - they will call me, not a locksmith or a gas station
Tarot cards are real. The comforting words are real. At least as real as, say, a movie, and movies aren’t scams because they’re pretend.
The scam isn’t selling someone a wooden box for their dearly departed, it’s selling a fancy wooden box for $7,000 that’s going to be seen for about 2 days before being buried in the ground.
When I’ve had to wait a long time for AAA, it’s been in circumstances where I would have had to wait just as long for a service I called directly. I’ve never waited long for a flat tire or a tow or jump in good weather during the day - the long waits have always been in bad weather or at night.
I’ve used my membership a lot, but the one time I was sued by people who had some shyster get ahold of them after we were in an accident it was worth all the money I ever paid. They aggressively fought the case (which was total BS) instead of just folding and handing over some settlement. I was happy that I wasn’t out anything additional, but I was very happy that they fought scamsters.
As for funeral people, I’ve not had a good experience with them and plan to go with the shoebox option. The schmancy funeral? To assuage the living people’s guilt or to show off. I know a lot of these types of ceremonies are culturally dependent, but I’m happy to see that this (generic American) style of funeral is no longer de rigueur.
Certainly funeral costs are high, but I would guess that’s a hard profession to be in. They are surrounded by dead bodies and grieving relatives every day. It probably takes a person with a unique perspective on life to make that a career. If the costs were cheaper, they would get paid less and it’d be harder to find employees to do the work. I agree that the costs are probably higher than they really need to be, but some of that is the surcharge for having to work in that industry.
Just this week, my husband got an envelope from his dad in the mail - two cards from 1-800- CREMATE (OK, not actually the number, but for illustrative purposes…) with the names and ID numbers for each of his parents. They’ve made all their arrangements, they don’t want a funeral, and they want their ashes spread in the Great Smokies Natl Park (Yeah, I know that’s illegal - they don’t care.) So thanks to them for pre-planning.
My brother is my mom’s executor, and she’s already said she wants to be cremated and her ashes put with our dad’s casket. So that’s settled, too.
Spousal unit and I are both donating our carcasses to the Maryland Anatomy Board for med students or whatever else they see fit, then the cremains will be returned to our daughter. There’s a company in Annapolis that will take the ashes to the area of the Chesapeake Bay where it’s permitted to dump them, so that’s where we’ll end up. My daughter doesn’t have to deal with anything.
Do you know this to be a fact, or is this something they told you?
We spread a friend’s ashes at a lake where he liked to fish. When I asked for permission to do this, the park guy took me aside and asked that I not ask. If I asked, the answer was “no”, but if we just did it there were no negative consequences. All he requested was we be discreet.
Of course there were gusting winds that day..
I wouldn’t say that none of them are particularly vulnerable at a time of loss - but some of them aren’t. When my grandfather died and when my father died, we made sure the “correct” people accompanied my mother to make the funeral arrangements. And by “correct” , I mean the people who wouldn’t let my mother choose the crazy expensive options without comment ( in the case of my grandfather, an uncle who would have absolutely not agreed to the crazy expensive options and would have outright stopped it.) Because my mother doesn’t need to be grieving to have overpaid - she paid sticker price for her cars, thinks “the most expensive is the best” for certain things , likes to show off generally and in addition to all that has a thing about funeral procedures*. Nobody needed to be predatory with her to get her to spend money - she was predisposed in that direction.
Absolute bull. The proper response when confronting grieving relatives is to take them for all they’ve got when you know they aren’t thinking rationally? They aren’t “people with a unique perspective”.
They are greedy.
One of my high school bud’s father was a funeral director. She said her father felt it important to help people get through the process of laying a loved one to rest in whatever way they felt best.