mgarcia

Have you ever had to call for road-side assistance?  If you have, how was your experience?  Take some time to reflect on the experience.  How long did it take for a truck to arrive to help?  Was the driver polite and was he/she professional? Were you satisfied with the service?  Most people who have had to use some sort of road-side assistance will answer negatively to all the above questions.  Why is that? I like to think that maybe just maybe we are not in a good mood when we have to contact someone to come out and help us.  One, we are stuck.  Two, we have no control over the situation.  And, Three, because of one and two we are already in a bad mood.  Can anyone, no matter how fast they get there or how well dressed they are or how polite they are, really please you? You pay money to get assistance; shouldn’t you be satisfied with your purchase?  If I go to a store and buy an item, any item, it better do what is supposed to do, and If it doesn’t I will return it to the store for my money back.  Can you do that with your roadside assistance plan?  No.  You can not.  I have on certain occasions have had to request for a tire change on the side of the freeway and I have, and I know I am not alone on this one, locked my keys in my car.  I at the time had AAA* and they sent out a tow truck company to help me out.  But does AAA* know who they are sending out?  Are they paying them right?  Are they respected and treated correctly by AAA*?  The driver is trying to make a living, he is just trying to do his job.  But is AAA* taking your money every year and pocketing it and only paying for the minimal service available? Doesn’t quality of service mean anything to them?   If I pay $100 for a year and only use it once in the year, let’s say for a lock out, what does the towing company get paid from them?   They might get something like $25.00.  What happened to the other $75.00 that I didn’t use?  Do I then get a discount for the following year?  Doubt it.  Do they bonus their vendors?  No.  I would then assume that maybe there is another customer of AAA that also paid their $100 fee for the year and needed to be towed and the tow they needed maybe cost AAA* $175.00.  Well, there goes “my” $75.  I just paid to help someone else’s bill.What is it with the road side assistance programs?  Why doesn’t anyone just pick up the phone dial 411 and get a tow truck company anymore.  There are so many middle men now that no one gets paid right.  Why not go directly to the people who are going to come out and assist you.  I mean it is not as costly as AAA* if you only use it once or twice a year, which majority of people do anyway.  Your annual fee is not just paying for your assistance.  It is paying for the dispatcher at AAA* and then AAA* outsources their roadside assistance program to another company, then finally the tow truck company is called out.  Maybe that is another reason for the long wait times.  There are simply too many Middle Men in this industry.All of this came to mind today when I was trying to pick up some new contracts and all of the roadside assistant programs outsource their work to companies that I am already contracted with.  I call GM Motor Club and they tell me they outsource to Cross Country Motor Club, with whom I already hold a current contract.  So just remember the next time you call for assistance through your “program”, doesn’t really matter which it is, you are going through about 4 different companies and paying for all of them, and you probably never really speak with anyone at GM Motor Club, or AAA, or what ever else plan you might have.  *Please note that the names of all and any service providers are only being used as example and this is not a reflection of them in general.

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