Hi, my name is plattlesley! Wanted to share my experience with Motability

plattlesley

jus just wanted to share an experience I had today. I picked up my brand new Motability car this afternoon, drove 50 miles and decided to stop off and get something to eat in then when we went to set off again the car wouldn’t start.

By the time the car broke down the garage I bought the car from was closed.

I called Motability breakdown who took my details and I told them i couldn’t get out the car by myself.

After 1 hour I didn’t heard anything so I called back at this point they arranged a taxi for us to get home.

Whilst on the way home someone from breakdown called me but we got cut off so I called back when i got home but got a recorded message to say they would call back.

After 3 hours I’d still not heard anything so I called the breakdown company back and they couldn’t find a record of my breakdown so told me to wait for the original caller to call me back.

My next call was from the breakdown recovery driver to say that he was at my car. I told him I was already at home and I was 45 minutes away from him, by which time it was 11pm and it had been 4 hours since my original call.

I’ve now had to rebook the call out for tomorrow of which they couldn’t give me a time.

I have never had to wait 4 hours for a breakdown call out when I was able bodied so think it is ridiculous that I had to wait 4 hours being disabled.

i understand that they were busy but if i hadn’t have kept calling I would have been waiting in the car with my 13 year old daughter for 4 hours not even being able to go to the toilet because the fast food restaurant we were parked up at toilet was out of order and we were too far to go back to the retail park and even if we had have done that the park would have been closed.

In total it took 7 phone calls to get a decent response and no apology.

All of this I explained to the breakdown company at the time of my call.


I just wanted to let other people know about this experience and see if anyone else had had any similar experiences.

Hannah_Alumni

Hello @plattlesley

Welcome to the community!  

I'm so sorry about the experience you had. Have you heard anything more from them since you last posted? 

OverlyAnxious

It sounds like the problem is really with the breakdown company (RAC?) rather than Motability? 

If that is the case, then yes I've had bad experiences with both AA & RAC.  So much so that I have been terrified about vehicle breakdowns ever since.  Sadly I don't think there is any breakdown service that is consistently reliable.

I hope you've got it recovered now, and more importantly, found the cause of the breakdown so that can be avoided in future?  Often new cars have low battery charge after sitting in compounds and just being driven short distances for the PDI etc but I would have expected a 50 mile trip to top up the battery so maybe not the fault here.

trb10

Have you called Motability and relayed your experience to them?  In my experience they are usually really nice people.

2oldcodgers

I have always had breakdown cover via my insurance policies (AA sometimes RAC) and another that I paid for (Green Flag). I work on the basis of it being better safe than sorry. 
Green Flag have always offered a faster and better service.
I now have a Motability car which comes with RAC cover. I still continue to pay for the Green Flag one on top of.
I don't trust either the RAC or AA to give me the service I want and need.

plattlesley

Thank you for all your comments, I’ve contacted Motability and they are going to escalate it on my behalf and I have put in a complaint to RAC the problem was resolved quickly but it took 23 hours in the end. Motability/RAC got us a taxi home and back again but it took 11 calls to get a resolution in the end