Mayday and Caravan Storage

Thank you David Smith for the first response from the Club on "CT" that I could describe as detailed and comprehensive. 

Thanks for the reply, obviously I was given false information when I rang the breakdown service. My renewal is the 1st March so at least I have a month to look elsewhere for the cover I need.

Pretty poor service that should have been tailor made to accommodate car and caravan scenarios, be it outward bound or homeward bound and two different residences for both vehicles. 

Beggars belief how CAMC can associate itself with something so lacking.

I could understand a limit as to distance form storage to home.

Some store their caravan close to where they live; others store it close to where they use it. I don't think a distance limit would be acceptable to those who, for example, store their caravan at Strathclyde Park in Scotland, and live in the Midlands of England.

I know that some store at a distance. The only way I could see them get what they want would be with a supplement

What a good idea.  I think you are on to something there.

If the membership of The Caravan Club included the basic Mayday service in its price, members could then opt to pay more by way of supplements for higher levels of service. It would just need figures for the uptake on the Mayday service to work out the increase in fee required, and as it would be spread across all members, not just those currently joining Mayday, then the increase might well be quite small.

I recall that there was some proposed legislation that included all motor vehicles used on the road to have basic breakdown recovery cover in place (as in many other countries I believe) but that it is languishing due to the present distractions in Westminster.

I agree ET. Recently we had ours on a service pitch at Cirencester, some 140 miles from where we store it and live. Just before we were due to pick it up, it occurred to me that if someone ran into the back compromising our towing capability we would be responsible for getting it back, as I doubt greenflag would believe we were just on a day out from the site.😀

Thank you David for clarifying the situation. 

It is disappointing that Mayday does not provide adequate cover for members who have to keep their caravans at a storage site. I don't know how long Mayday has been in operation but I am a little puzzled that this cover wasn't built in from the outset. I would guess that a sizeable minority of members use a storage site, and, ironically, the Caravan Club are possibly the largest provider of caravan storage spaces in the UK!

Anyway, as David has said, the Caravan Club are in continuous discussion with Green Flag about product enhancements, so lets hope this issue can be resolved in the not too distant future. 

Thank you to all who responded.

We thank David for the reply however it does leave a glaring shortfall in the service offered by Mayday when you take into consideration that probably a good percentage of members store their caravans at a different location to their home address.

As we have the highest cover and pay the extra, we have always been under the impression that the caravan would be taken to the storage and the vehicle to a garage or in the event it is a weekend or a Bank Holiday, vehicle home to be collected the next day and taken to the garage.  Our caravan storage depot for the caravan is about 8 miles from our residence.

So what happens currently if the vehicle breaks down and is taken with caravan to caravan storage however the vehicle cannot be left at the garage as the garage is closed for the weekend or Bank holiday?  Would they then take the vehicle home and collect the next day to take to the garage?

Thanks for the clarification but as some have said it is different to what I thought I was covered for, also the comments regarding the possibility of a gesture of goodwill may be applied is not satisfactory, I don’t pay for a service that depends on a gesture of goodwill being applied.

It reminds me of the only occasion in 10 years I needed to use Mayday and the arguments to get the car taken to a dealership 14 miles from the site, us two and our dogs back to the site, when you are 250 miles from home you don’t always know where the nearest dealership is who is prepared to do a repair under warranty so we asked to be taken back to our site so I could find a dealership to sort the car out, they recovered us to the site but then refused to take the car the next day the 14 miles to the dealership.

It was only when I said the option was to recover car and caravan 250 miles back home after our holiday that they agreed to pick the car up and take it for repair the following day

The breakdown vehicle they sent to recover us back to our site was the filthiest I have seen, inside far worse than outside and yet he refused to take our two dogs, he did agree as a “favour” to take them, I don’t want to have to rely on a favour thank you.

I am another who will re-evaluate my membership to Mayday recovery.