Breakdown cover for older cars
- Thread starter Harnser
- Start date
Man of Honour
Up until September last year I had a 04 plate Astra G and overall it was pretty reliable. it was old but well maintained by myself and only had 75k on the clock. it did seem to suffer from coil packs failing and I replaced this three times in the 9 years I had the car. At least it was driveable as it just went into limp home mode. I did have one serious breakdown though and with no breakdown cover had to fork out for recovery. We were in Elgin which is 17 miles away and I lost drive altogether. I managed to free wheel into Lidl's car park and had a look underneath to find a failed drive shaft. After phoning around trying to find someone who could recover us back home so I could fix the car we got lucky and found a recovery company who charged us £120 which wasn't too bad. I got a replacement drive shaft ordered which turned up two days later. That cost me £83 and a hour of my time to remove the old and fit the new. I would have paid more in breakdown premiums over the years than the £120 it cost me to get recovered but being able to call the breakdown company and get sorted would have been a hell of a lot less hassle.
I wonder what the cost would have been if you were 100 miles away from home, rather than 17 miles?
Ive just come across this thread as i'm looking for breakdown cover for two cars that have just come out of warranty.
Soldato
And that's how people like you sucked into paying for annual membership.....
There are breakdown services that you can call out, that you don't have to be a member of to use. All the money you would save, would more than cover the once in a blue moon you would call one out
My car's 18 years old, so last year I thought it may be prudent to take out breakdown cover (for the first time).
Pleased I did, as the clutch went last month. Not sure how much it would have cost to call out a recovery vehicle, but no doubt it would have been more than Green Flag has cost me for the year.
Pleased I did, as the clutch went last month. Not sure how much it would have cost to call out a recovery vehicle, but no doubt it would have been more than Green Flag has cost me for the year.
Soldato
But not more than paying for breakdown cover for the 11 years before that? (let's assume best case scenario and it's a Kia with 7 year warranty).
But not more than paying for breakdown cover for the 11 years before that? (let's assume best case scenario and it's a Kia with 7 year warranty).
That's the thing... this is the first year I've taken out breakdown cover.
Soldato
The wife had a pucture on M5 - breakdown cover paid for itself right then.
Soldato
Yeah, this is really annoying, and the reason I took out breakdown cover on my Zoe. Even though it came with 3 years cover from Renault, that excluded tyres (i.e. the most likely thing to actually cause a breakdown on a brand new car
)