Mayday and Caravan Storage

When my car has broken down I got the repair done locally and stayed  in the caravan until the car was fixed. 

The last three occasions were total brake failure at Prato in Italy, cooling system failure/radiator boiling at Sallanches in France, and keys locked in the car at Bregenz in Austria. Local garages dealt with all three problems very well without me phoning an insurance company. 

Why are you so keen on being taken here, there and everywhere on a flat bed truck?

The P{'s concern is when in UK, having finished holiday and heading back to storage with the caravan on the back.

After being with Greenflag/Mayday for nearly 25 years we have now switched to RAC Arrival which starts the day our current Mayday cover finishes.  It did cost us a bit more but at least we have peace of mind and no hassles with the caravan being in storage!

That's easy to solve. The breakdown service would take car and caravan to the garage where I am a regular customer. They would put the caravan in their compound while they repaired the car, and would lend me a courtesy car to go home in. 

Easy in your case ET but not for all. In many cases the car workshop that people use could be closed on a Sunday for example or might not offer courtesy car or have storage space. They might also not have a secure compound. In the post above yours Surfer has also found a solution to his problem.

we have done the same

I suspect that more will follow

Our experiences with Mayday,..

Last July,...( heatwave!)...We experienced an undiagnosable?,..fault on our Jeep,..although my garage had it sussed in 2 mins,....

We were onsite, so arranged a recovery in 10 days in order to complete our holiday, as the Jeep was in "safe" mode, we could use it, but towing was not advisable.

The contractor phoned the night before to arrange an exact time.

We agreed 8 am as our storage closed at 18:00

I mentioned our dog and was told ( by the owner of the recovery business,..35 years in the trade,man and boy)....that he had to travel in the car, on the truck. I pointed out that the previous days had been approaching 30 degC and did he think that the dog would be OK,...

He thought for a second or two and replied, "How about if we left the engine running and the air on on?",.....WTF!!....I told him to hang fire.

On contacting The Club.for the umpteenth time, after being assured that the dog would be OK,..( have a word with the driver when he turns up)...I told them that I wouldn't accept the service and for them to sort it out.

I was contacted by Green Flag 5 or 6 times while on holiday about the recovery, each time by a different person, and none of them knew my level of cover, a couple even saying that I didn't have double destination cover!.....

Finally about 21:00 on the night before, someone contacted me and told me that we qualified for a .....HIRE CAR!....which sorted everything,....or so we thought.

A hire car was arranged at a depot 20m away and we would be picked up because we had to do paperwork at the Enterprise office.

The Jeep and van had by this time departed for home, leaving us and the  dog on a picnic table onsite in full sun, luckily other banners took pity on us.

I rand after 2 hours asking where our ride to Dorchester was, only to be informed that the driver had gone to Poole to get the hire vehicle!

Five hours late they turned up on site, it appears we didn't need to do the paperwork at the office after all.

That part of the nightmare was down to Enterprise, so no fault of Mayday,...until the next episode,....

Desperate to find out where our recovered units were, I contacted Green Flag to find out where they were, and they said they'd ring back.

Doing maximum allowed speeds, I tried to catch up until I got to Frankley Services (M5) to fuel up and check again with GF,...

As we were getting close to closing time for the storage,.....I was amazed to hear that the driver had run out of hours and had left the units at Strensham Services awaiting another driver!.....we had in fact overtaken them after starting out six hours later.

I eventually got told that they were on the move and waited at storage .

It was obvious that they wouldn't make closing time, so I rang GF again, panicking about leaving the van outside the storage and was told straight out of the blue that if they didn't make the storage, they would arrange with local agents to open their compound and store my vehicles until they could be transported by them to the storage site and garage, when open.

If I'd been told this earlier it would have saved time and worry.

I still can't make head nor tail of what I am actually entitled to with Mayday.

I kicked it up to The Club, telling them that Mayday was a Club scheme and that whatever they tried to say, they were ultimately responsible for the actions of their agents.

I see that there is now a new level of cover since my experience which includes car hire and expenses, I will be seeking assurances before taking it out, if not,....I'm going elsewhere.

Sorry it's so long, but it may help.

 

 

Obviously the left hand didn't even know the right hand existed! 

Good news! It looks like the Mayday/storage issue has been resolved.

I understand that from 5 November Mayday have introduced "Double Drop Off". This means if your car needs to be taken to your home or a local garage your caravan will be recovered to a storage site within a 75 mile radius of your home address.

The new arrangement is mentioned in the Nick Lomas column in the December club magazine. 

I would like to thank David Smith at the Caravan Club for his efforts in getting this issue resolved.