My take on RAC's European Breakdown Cover

This is going to come across as something of a rant. I'd much rather it didn't. I'm going to try and explain this fairly and even-handedly and I invite you, the reader, to leave comments that point out areas where I've allowed any traces of bias to seep through.

The RAC are a pile of big, fat, filthy mother-fucking wankers.

Why I bought the policy

When embarking on a six-month solo tour of Europe on a budget, it's important to consider safety as well as cost. What items, what paperwork, what servicing really needs to be done before you go? I took the low-risk approach. I started by heading to a VW specialist in West London for a full mechanical service. My campervan was not broken, did not need fixing, and indeed had just that week passed a new MOT with flying colours. But it's better to be safe. So I spent over £1,100 getting everything polished and replaced, from gear brushes to battery wires. In fact, sod it, here's the full list if you're feeling up to it:

An almost complete list of things Cecil had before I left (yes there was more).

I therefore had no expectation that he might break down in Europe... but it's still better to be safe. So I called the RAC and asked for their most comprehensive, most expensive, most 'peace of mind' policy to cover me in every country I could ever possibly visit. The quote was £680, a hard pill to swallow, but I withdrew a credit card from my wallet with shaking hand and read out the numbers knowing that this was the right thing to do.

Letting them take control

Well, wouldn't luck have it? On the second day of my six-month tour, the engine died. I pulled on to the side of the road thinking, "shit", but also thinking, "thank God for the RAC - come and save me you rugged heroes!".

Save me they did. They called a man from Citroen who (eventually) found me and dragged me to his garage. This was the extent of the RAC cover for Cecil - as soon as the campervan had been collected, all the expenses would be mine. OK, fair enough, there can't be much wrong with it anyway. The RAC put me in a hotel - OK, fine, not something I would do of my own accord but let's enjoy it while it's being offered, eh? Left to my own devices, I would probably have either kipped in my own camper, popped up the little hiking tent or caught a train to my parents' house, but they were offering a hotel - great!

Of course, another part of this service is the communication with the garage. Well wasn't that fantastic? The European breakdown service is provided by a third party called Opteven. Apparently they have a team of mechanical experts, fluent in French, who would call the mechanics almost daily for a detailed update. Then they would try to explain it to the customer services team in laymen's terms. Finally Debbie from the communications team would call me and say "they're working on it" or "it's not ready yet". If I pushed her for details, I might get, "they've done something with the wiring". No amount of nagging would get me any kind of meaningful information about what my money was being spent on or even how much I was spending.

Which one's Debbie? Grrrr...

I jumped up and down, cried, sent email upon email begging for information on my campervan but none of it was any use. 6 weeks later I collected Cecil and drained my bank account to the tune of 960 Euros. Don't try and tell me they didn't see the insurance company coming.

Taking my own control

So when I finally got to my Mum and Dad's house and discovered a nasty oil leak, I didn't have much interest in calling the RAC back. What good were they? I didn't need to be dragged off the side of a road and I didn't need a hotel. And I certainly didn't need total and utter confusion about what was happening to my campervan. So I saved everyone some time and money by sourcing a local mechanic to help out. He wasn't available for a while but sod it, I had places to be and caught my Ryanair flight to Belgium for the week.

Stuck on a motorway

Now, sadly every mechanic has his bad days, and when I departed for Spain 4 weeks later Cecil broke down again. This time I did need dragging around so I took a deep breath and called the RAC. They couldn't recover me themselves due to Autoroute regulations but they would pay for the private recovery. Cool! I was recovered a distance of, what, 6 miles in tandem with two ladies and their Renault. The first question was "do you have insurance?", and what a surprise that having replied "yes" his bill suddenly rocketed to over 200 Euros. And you can bet the two ladies (ahem, their insurance, ahem) were charged the same.

Having left the motorway and having established that the campervan really was broken again, I called the RAC to discuss options. I told them that a mechanic back up North had done the work and that I was very keen for him to continue that work, rather than taking it to yet another garage. They initially told me that the policy was limited to 100km tows and that my mechanic was around 120km away. I asked if they could just take me the 100km in that case, that perhaps I could find my own way the final 20km, but they seemed unsure.

10 minutes later, the phone rang and the chap told me, "OK as an exception we'll tow you the 120km, but if you break down again in the next few days it will be difficult".
"The next few days?", I replied, "no problem - it'll probably be in the garage again anyway and I certainly won't plan for it to break down!". As far as I was concerned, that was it.

However, soon after that the phone rang again. This time it was the supervisor. "I just want to make sure my colleague explained to you that we will not be able to cover future breakdowns."
"Yes", I replied, "for the next few days, right?".
"For the rest of this trip".
"Hang on a minute - you mean until the end of August? You mean if I break down in Poland in mid-July you won't cover me for that?". He confirmed.

Eventually we agreed that I would pay 50% of the tow charge and my policy would stay in force. I had a phonecall from yet another representative to take payment for my half, based on the tow company's quote of 517 Euros plus motorway tolls. Read that again: 517 Euros plus motorway tolls. With no other option apparent I paid again, my half of the total coming to 267 Euros.

When the tow company turned up they were expecting to take me to Montpellier. I stopped them immediately - that was far too far. We went into the office - I found the correct address on Google Maps for them and we left for the correct address, approximately half the distance of Montpellier. I called the RAC back to explain the mixup and to tell them we would not have to pay so much after all, and that I expected to get a partial refund from my half.

Wishing they'd go away

The tow company dropped me off ('dropped' being the operative word but I can't bring myself to mentally relive that moment) at the closed garage and made me sign a piece of paper. I tried to discuss costs with them but they refused, telling me to speak only with my insurance company. My favourite people. I telephoned them as soon as I got back to Dad's and explained the situation: even if the distance weren't so much shorter, we hadn't even been on the motorway that I'd supposedly prepaid tolls for!

Well they weren't interested in the slightest. The quote from the supervisor was "we're just lucky someone accepted the job", not appreciating how much every single Euro cent means to me right now. After days of hassling, I had to let it drop when they explained, "well there was a 50% surcharge you see".
"50%? Why so much ? A weekend is 25%."
"They charged 25% for the weekend and another 25% for being a bank holiday".
"But the bank holiday is on Monday. It's either the bank holiday or the weekend, not both!" As if that made a difference. Insurance job, right?

Excuse my French

It's been quite a relief to me that the RAC / Opteven / Big Fat Wankers don't have to be involved in these latest repairs. I've been able to wander round and visit the mechanic regularly - he's shown me the parts and the problems, and through waving and grinning we've understood each other well. We have a friendly relationship and he's reasonable, even apologetic, about correcting mistakes he made last time. The BFWankers had asked me for his phone number but I told them there was no need - they could save their time and energy and I could continue on my own. And that seemed fine.

Until today. Today I was called and told that the remainder of my policy cover had been cancelled. The reason? The tow company had informed them that I had directed them to 'my home address'. The BFWankers therefore felt I had reneged on the agreement and that I was abusing my policy to - what? Put my feet up and avoid driving? The fact that I had not given them a phone number was proof that my campervan wasn't even broken and that I was a naughty girl who was not to be given any futher assistance.

Yeah, 'cos Mum and Dad's house is exactly where I always wanted to spent my adventure-of-a-lifetime!

It needs saying.

And finally...

I've just given them all the phone numbers and addresses that I know and they've told me that they plan to check them out tomorrow. I feel almost ready to explode: these people cost me in the first place, they're continuing to cost me and they're continually stressing me *the* *fuck* *out*. Yes, they've probably paid out at least £680 on me so far. But that hasn't been £680 that I would have needed to pay! That's £680 of wasted money that's been absorbed by greedy recovery drivers, by unreasonable surcharges and by overpriced hotels beyond my means and way beyond my requirements. £680 that they've wasted and at least that amount again that I've wasted by paying for the things they won't cover.

If I hadn't taken that tow back to the Minervois on Sunday, who would have benefitted? The RAC would have had to start picking out hotels again, maybe also a hire car. I would have been presented with a whole new garage, one that was busy, ignorant and could smell insurance in the air. Both the RAC and I would have been ripped off. Again. Yeah, great idea.

Isn't this type of policy supposed to make you feel relaxed, comfortable, secure? Isn't it supposed to ease your mind and leave you free to concentrate on other things? Assuming this is true, the RAC is in serious breach of contract. I could be here relaxing, talking to my mechanic and getting things sorted out but no - instead I'm talking to the RAC, I'm explaining myself to them, I'm getting frustrated by their absolute lack of any kind of motivation to assist and I'm leaking money. And what's the betting that tomorrow morning they'll start calling those numbers I've given them and upsetting the people who're helping me. That garage bill ain't gonna go down.

So in conclusion, there are upside and downsides to having comprehensive RAC breakdown cover. Except that actually they're all downsides. No upsides. And you shouldn't buy it. And the RAC are a pile of big, fat, filthy mother-fucking wankers.

At least it's not just me

Today has been quite a day for vehicles, old and new. And not just mine.

The Quad Bike Saga

My parents' village has quite a nifty scheme. Each year, they divide up an area of a forest on their nearby mountain, and each villager is allocated a plot that they can cut down for firewood. In order to collect his allocation, my Dad uses an old quad bike to tow a trailer up and down the slope.

An old second-hand jobby, but it served the purpose

A couple of months ago it was stolen from his driveway in the night. Since it wasn't registered for road use, neither was it insured and my Dad was gutted. Gut-ted. So it was straight onto some dealers to find a replacement.

To cut a very, very long story short, he eventually found one in Wales at the right price and with the right spec and ordered it for delivery to the house in France. It had been so difficult to source that we had all hopes pinned on it arriving on time and in one piece - and this morning it would be coming, between 11am and midday.

At 9am the phone rang. My Mother answered the phone to a french warehouse worker who started talking about 'problem' and 'broken' and she panicked, calling my french friend out of bed to translate. He told us that when the quad bike had been delivered to the nearby warehouse it had been missing most of its packaging and that they'd therefore struggled to take it off the lorry. The warehouse worker described a box smashing and the tyres being flat and said that:
a) he was unable to load it onto his lorry for delivery and
b) if it was him, he'd refuse to accept the item and have it sent back to its sender.

This was not the news we wanted. My father, generally a solid and reasonable man, was close to tears. We asked to visit the warehouse (only 25 miles away) to see the damage for ourselves, fearing the worst. We imagined the bike having been dropped or having had something dropped on it... we assumed that the tyres would be the least of the problems, that the vehicle could be a complete write-off.

A burst tyre... not the end of the world

Such a relief when we were introduced to the beast! It was all a misunderstanding. The bike had been dispatched on a metal palette which had collapsed, but that was all. One tyre was flat - just one - and there was no other damage. The warehouse worker had misunderstood because he usually only saw brand new bikes shipped in fibre glass boxes, so he was surprised to see this one without. We rolled it off of the broken palette and arranged for a next-day delivery.

The Citroen Graveyard

This is a field that we passed on the way back. It's not quite as sad as it looks - there's a mechanic who owns the field and, although he's probably collected too many, he does work on them and may well refurbish them one-at-a-time to order. But there must have been 80 of them parked up here, in various states of repair.

They're just so ugly, aren't they? And wouldn't they make fantastic campervans?

Back to Cecil

My final visit was to the usual mechanic to check on Cecil, expecting to take him home today. You see, after our disaster en route to Spain, the mechanic diagnosed the following:
- The gasket rocker cover that he'd replaced before I left no longer matched perfectly with the one next to it, which was very slightly distorted. He said that he'd be gluing the two together to straighten them out and that this would finally fix the oil leak.
- The voltage regulator - an easy part to source and fit - was broken by the old alternator, so he would order this for the next day.

If that 5-day-old Bosch alternator is broken, I may hurt someone.

Unfortunately, nothing's ever that simple. The boss was there when I arrived and he started by telling me something I didn't want to hear: "the new alternator is broken". Nooooooooo! After more discussion, he explained that they had fitted the new voltage regulator but that the problem was still present. He promised that tomorrow he would carry out more tests to establish for certain which part was at fault and to form a plan of action. Please, please pray to whatever Gods or spirits you have belief in that my alternator will be OK!

Sod it, whatever the news is tomorrow, I AM going to Barcelona. By plane, by train, hell by walking - I'm going to see Spain. Uuuugh.

Happy Ending Revoked

I can't quite bring myself to write this update... so I'll let the pictures tell the story.

I packed the bus and drove South from the Minervois. I was stopped by the Gendarmes for a random document check, which I passed, picked up a hitchiker who only wanted to go 500m, and was waved to by no fewer than 5 other VW buses (all of them more modern - T25s and later). Just before the Spanish border, I stopped for petrol and a sandwich.

As I was about to go again, my Generator light came on. Now, normally a bit of revving persuades the bus that it actually is charging, but this time no luck... revving would dim the light but it always returned. So I peered into the engine bay. Everything appeared to be working mechanically. And then a nearby Spaniard pointed out the growing puddle of oil underneath... 

Because I was on a motorway, I had to call 112 to get a tow from the service station (we made it 150 metres on this setup before the guy realised how stupid it was and swapped the vehicles over). I shared my lift with two chatty middle-aged sisters and their pet bird.

After the tow, once the sisters were sorted out, we lifted Cecil into the air and took a look underneath. The engine was still starting and running all right but there was a clear leak of oil coming from the gasket area - exactly the same as last time. The mechanic also did a quick test of the alternator but he didn't trust his own results.

Finally, after a lot of argument and discussion between me, the recovery mechanic and the RAC, a tow truck arrived to take me back to the Minervois and to the garage that was supposed to have repaired my bus on Friday. It was a bumpy road and an old french lady shouted at us when we arrived, but at least it was done. My heart sank when I tried to start the engine to park it and found the battery flat. Is it possible that a brand new alternator has met the same fate as the last one?

Well today (Monday) is a bank holiday in France so we just have to wait until the mechanic returns tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm going to get very drunk and snap at people who don't deserve it. Feel free to leave a comment to test this conviction!

A post with a happy ending

I think we're all bored with "my campervan's broken" by now... well it's not any more!

Waiting for attention

What happened this time?

You'll remember that before I went to Belgium I discovered a nasty oil leak at the back of the bus, which prompted me to take it into a local garage in France rather than drive any further. Well, after a couple of days, the mechanic came back with news:

Good - the oil leak was not a serious problem and he could fix it manually.
Bad - the oil had leaked all over the alternator and broken it, so it needed replacing (groan).

I stopped in the garage for a chat and he said he may be able to source a reconditioned alternator for around 300 Euros. Woah there! VW Heritage in the UK have a brand new unit in stock for £119. So he agreed to let me buy it.

The WiFi wasn't working that afternoon, so I did the old-fashioned thing and telephoned the supplier. We had a quick conversation in which I described my bus and the operator assured me that he had the exact part there for only £104. Bonus! I paid over the phone. The next question was regarding postage - their standard service to the South of France was £48. I declined this and instead asked them to print out a label for Parcels Please, who would collect it from their warehouse and deliver it to me for only £17.50. I'm afraid this did confuse them a bit, but they got to grips with it in the end.

Unfortunately this meant another week's wait, so I relaxed again and painted some more yoghurt pots.

My Mum can sell them at the Poppy Fayre

Did it go smoothly for once?

The next week, my parcel was delivered and I tore it open, delighted to see a real life alternator inside. My Dad got his car out and we buzzed down to the garage to present our wares. "Non", said the mechanic. My bus was already in the air with its alternator removed and it was clearly different. We were baffled... if this was the correct alternator, then was my bus in fact fitted with some bizarre non-standard engine?

The bit that was causing all the trouble

I sloped home and got online to check it out. It didn't take long to work out that the problem was simple: VW Heritage had sent me the wrong part. Again. Although I really have to give them their dues - the next day they admitted their mistake and agreed to rush a replacement alternator out by Express service within 24 hours. And so I repackaged the incorrect part, waited at home and did the swap when the courier arrived (apparently following a long lunch).

That was on Wednesday. And today, I'm delighted to share that everything is done. The bus is back with me, shiny and healthy and raring to go.

What next?

Here I come, Barcelona! Monday is a bank holiday in France (yes, again) so I'll make my escape on Sunday when they're all busy drinking wine. Barcelona should be reachable in about 6 hours and it's one of the European cities I'm most excited to visit. Vroooommmm...

Err...

By now I should be writing to you from Eastern France. But I'm not. Here's why:

Waiting for a delivery

As mentioned in my last post, the fuel gauge I'd been chasing for 5 weeks was finally due to arrive yesterday. We had agreed by telephone to pay the cost of an 'Express' courier service that would guarantee its arrival before midday, therefore delaying my departure by no more than a few hours.

However by 1pm there was still no sign of it so I logged on to view the tracking information and see what was going on. Well, everything there looked normal except that it was apparently sent by 'Express Saver' which was only guaranteed to arrive by the end of the day.

I marvelled somewhat at the journey this thing had been taking to get here. Originally sourced in Germany, it had been obtained by a France-based company called VW Heritage who had sent it to their French-speaking agent in the UK office because it was for a 'UK customer' in France. She had then given it to a courier who had flown it from London Stansted Airport to a sorting office back in Germany, in fact very close to the Belgian border where I will be staying this weekend. From there it had, overnight, flown to Montpellier in the South of France and loaded onto a van for delivery. (I would be passing through Montpellier on my journey to Belgium.) So none of this tracking information made me any happier about the delay we were experiencing.

The spare part had done more miles than the campervan

Finally at 2pm I gave up... I had about 8 hours of driving ahead of me and couldn't wait any longer. So, after agreeing with the supplier that they would refund my postage costs, I packed up the van, filled the petrol tank and said a tearful goodbye to my parents and friends.

I knew the bus was low on oil so I stopped at the first big garage shop on my route, about 25 minutes away from the departure point. Unfortunately the shop only stocked one grade of oil which wasn't right for me so I sloped back to the campervan to find my phone ringing. "It's me", said my Mum, "your package has just arrived". Dad kindly offered to drive out and meet me with it, since his car is much faster and it would help to reduce the extension of my journey.

Noticing a problem

As Dad got out of the car, he pointed at the back of my bus and asked, "Did you spill that when you were filling it up?". I followed his finger, confused, and realised there was a fresh pool of oil under my engine bay. Since I hadn't yet bought any oil, this was certainly not down to any spillages. In fact on looking further back there was a clear drip, drip, drip every yard tracing my route into the carpark. Oh.

There were no two ways about it - I could not drive to Belgium like this.

We bought a can of oil (any grade will do at this point) and sloshed it in, forming a convoy back home. My Dad called a bilingual friend of his who happens to be rather an expert in VW mechanics and the friend suggested that the oil seals could be leaking as a result of my engine performing at a higher pressure than it would have done when they had been fitted. He recommended a mechanic nearby and offered to come with us the next day to help explain everything in French.

Noticing another problem

Dad had given me the package that had delayed me so long so I started opening it, saying "let's just check this is actually a fuel gauge", to which we both chuckled. I opened the box, the paper filling, the inner box and the bag... and found this:

Not a fuel gauge

This is a rear suspension brush. It's for my campervan, I'll grant you that, but it's certainly not a fuel gauge.

I actually roared with laughter and tried to call my agent at VW Heritage, eager to share this news and feed on her resultant dismay, but was told that she was on her way to France. Perhaps by a similar 'Express Saver' service..? So now I wait to hear back from her colleague.

Plan B

In the meantime, I still have a festival to attend and friends to meet - nothing will keep me from that. Rather than driving, I will be flying Ryanair to Belgium on Friday for some traditional tent-in-mud camping, then making my way to Amsterdam with hiking boots and rucksack. The campsite I had booked there also has cabins - they're slightly more expensive but, since I've prepaid and can't get a full refund at this late date, I may as well enjoy the luxury.

On returning to the South, my repaired bus and I can go wherever we like. We can drive South into Spain, East into Provence and Italy, or across into Switzerland and Austria. Europe will be ours. (In a fun, light-hearted, touristy way. Not in a Hitler way.)

Doing Practical Things

I've been nagged for not writing a while! Apologies. To bring you up to date: I returned back to my home in Wales from Japan, spent 4 days tidying and organising and digging out important paperwork and then attended my friends' wedding before flying back to the South of France. I'm now back down here with my parents waiting for the final OK on the campervan.

Anyway, here's something I've been thinking about over the last couple of weeks...

My job was rubbish

This was a suspicion that has now been confirmed. Oh, don't get me wrong - I had fantastic colleagues, comfortable working conditions and fair pay. No complaints there. But what was I actually doing? Finding ways to make money advising other people on how to make more money. I travelled to locations around the world (seeing nothing more than airports and offices), talked a lot and wrote reports. And then the clients paid me. But what does that really mean in real life? A carpenter can turn trees into usable objects, potentially lasting hundreds of years. A farmer can use land and seed to provide food for himself and others. A midwife can ensure new generations of humanity. What was the point of me?

After the apocalypse...

I find this pops into my head quite often... if a virus wiped out 99% of the population and we were among the survivors, how would we live? Back to basics, having to sustain ourselves rather than relying on modern infrastructures, building new and smaller communities, how would we manage? You could no longer buy cleaning materials, spend your nights on the XBox or even switch a light on when it gets dark. Would we know what to do?

Inspirational TV show from the 1970s

OK, so this is a very hypothetical situation and not one I'm expecting to confront in my lifetime, but it does help to instill some of these principles. And it encourages me at least to try and be more practical and less wasteful.

Things I've been doing

This last week in the South of France has been rather helpful in learning to become productive.

1. Planting fruit trees. On my first day here, my mother took me down to her allotment and we planted a pear tree and an apple tree, with the hope that they would bear fruit next year if not this. A couple of days later we found a peach stone that had started to grow roots and planted that too. Fingers crossed they all settle into their new homes.

2. Fixing my laptop. Before I went to Japan, my cheap Dell Inspiron (originally £225 but now two years old) developed a fatal fault - the power connector had snapped off. A repair would have cost around £150 plus postage there and back, most likely totalling more than the cost of a brand new one. It was therefore destined for the bin. But if it was going in the bin anyway, was there any risk in attempting the fix ourselves?

My father did the appropriate investigations and found a detailed YouTube instruction video explaining how to take the laptop apart and locate the broken part. He also found a new replacement part on eBay for £25 inc postage and ordered it. We laid out heavy wooden board in the kitchen and got to work with a set of precision screwdrivers...

The halfway stage

We put all the parts back together, surprised to find none left over, turned the final screw and then plugged it into the mains. With baited breath we depressed the power button and waited... a light! There was a light! A big white 'on' light! And then the screen burst into life. Not only was the laptop repaired, it was running more smoothly than it ever had, thanks to some tightening up of certain cable ribbons deep inside. I look forward to using it for many more years to come.

3. Fixing my trousers. These have caused me rather a lot of embarrassment lately... they're a pair of combat trousers that I bought from an army surplus shop some ten years ago. They've proved themselves almost ideal for hiking, camping, working... but the fly has never been quite right.

In Japan I noticed that the zip seemed to be constantly falling down of its own accord, which led to dilemmas when out and about: does one walk brazenly past a group of people in the hope that they won't notice, or does one quickly turn and pull it up, correcting the issue but also immediately drawing attention to it?

This problem suddenly became much, much worse when the fly button also popped off. Luckily this was in my hostel so I picked up a sewing kit and stitched it back on. The next day was when I hired a bicycle and set off into the countryside the button snapped off completely. This left me wheeling my way down a country road past a coachload of schoolchildren with my trousers wide open. Nice.

My temporary fix

So yesterday my mother helped me to find a solution. She dug out an old pair of my father's combat trousers that had completely worn through and instructed me to strip them for parts. I unpicked the zip, cut off the button and we transferred both to my combats, restoring them to perfect usable condition. And we're still not throwing Dad's old trousers away - Mum is confident that she'll find a use for the torn old fabric, whether it's for patchworking or even just as rags.

I could continue the list but it would start to get boring. There will be many among you saying "so what?" because you have these practices integrated into your lives already. There will also be some astounded that we would consider them worthwhile doing. One thing is certain - this is a lifestyle accessible only to those with free time. Working 50 hours a week, commuting 200 miles, flying to the US every month -these things are not conducive to any kind of efficient or self-sustaining routine. But once you have the time there can be nothing more satisfying than breathing life back into old things and turning worthless articles into valuable ones. I look forward to doing a lot more of it.