European Breakdown Cover

A snowHead

Does anyone know of a company that offers European breakdown cover at a reasonable rate for a stay of 3 to 4 months? I'm being quoted nearly £200 by the AA. I know there's always someone on here who comes up with a great solution so thanks in advance!

A snowHead

Used to pay an insurance broker £150 extra for full Euro annual breakdown cover but perhaps they will sell you it as a stand alone policy too - try Googling Stuart Collins (somewhere in Wales IIRC).

It works too, I was rescued coming from the south of Spain to the alps on a Friday night and put up in a city centre hotel for the weekend until the garage had repaired the car, with all taxis to and from arranged and paid without any hassles.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Haggle with the AA I pay £102 a year with them they quoted £150 at first and I told them I had been offered £105, they came back with the new price in under 5 minutes. Do check reputations of any other firm. Friends last summer had a nightmare with a smaller cheaper company last year who refused to repatriate their car because they said it was worth less than £6000 which was ridiculous as they paid £28K for it 4 years before. Do check the small print

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A friend was quoted about £127 from the RAC.

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I think the issue here is 3 - 4 months. Like most insurance policies I think they usually have a 31 day maximum per trip. I've got to sort something out myself for a 6 week trip.

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Ade57, Just had a thought, try Green Flag. My father had to have his car brought back from Switzerland to the UK, they were amazing, they paid for him to have a hire car, flights back to the UK and delivered the car back on a low loader to his garage in Sussex. He only paid £52 for the cover so they certainly wouldn't want too many like him.

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I'm looking for the same thing; breakdown cover for the winter. Perhaps AA is expensive because they cover for having the vehicle returned to the UK. All I'm after is breakdown cover that will take me somewhere to get it fixed, has anyone taken out french breakdown insurance?

After all it is free

ArseCaptain, not directly answering your question, but related....I had my car repatriated at Easter due to being unable to drive it home through injury (I was the only driver). My vehicle breakdown covered it; although perhaps my travel insurance wouid have done too (I didn't look) - just a point to check really as you don't want your car stuck in country if you are repatriated back yourself.

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holidayloverxx, I've had exactly those discussions with Breakdown companies as I'm usually the only driver. RAC cover it, AA wouldn,t, Holiday insurance (at that time) said it should be breakdown provider. On that basis I've always used RAC.

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ADAC Plus membership covers anywhere in Europe for €79.50:

http://www.adac.de/mitgliedschaft/adac_membership/

T&C in English:

http://www.davidklyne.co.uk/Terms%20and%20conditions_Plus_englisch_2009_tcm4-30464%20%281%29.pdf

Bargain!

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Got the full ADAC Europe cover, and indeed intend that cover to double up on what may or may not be covered by a travel/wintersports etc. insurance.

Think the fee is more if it covers 2 drivers? But is still pretty cheap compared to AA etc. iirc.

Used it once on the autobahn at Bern, 11am in the snow on a Sunday morning, with a borked coil pack. Good service by the Touring Club Switzerland guy that turned up, fixed it, sorted it all out with ADAC.

AFAIK the guys who drive £1000 bangers to drive once round the Nurburgring usually pay the €80 to get full ADAC Pan-EU cover. They'll do everything. Flights or train for driver+passengers, car repatriation, wrecked car repatriation and sort all the customs, ...

Actually just checked my RAC annual cover which runs to March. It actually covers trips up to 90 days so will cover my trip It cost £115 last March.

You know it makes sense.

For cover just for breakdowns in France Axa do it. I know you are sorted but I'll find the email in case it applies to anyone else

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

I have just done annual breakdown policy including Europe with Kwikfit for £60 for a 2 year old car. Try one of the moneysupermarket comparison sites. If they only cover 90 days and your trip is longer..just take out a new policy...it's all done by email...

A snowHead

snowyowl, what level cover do you get for that?

A snowHead

Not all such policies are the same - and the AA sells different levels of cover. Their expensive cover provides a whole heap more than my annual one, which costs around £100. Check the small print. To a certain extent (though not entirely) you get what you pay for. My knowledge might well be out of date now, but it used to be the case that with the AA top cover, if your car breaks down on the way home from a trip when the kids have to be back in school and you have to be back at work, they will take you where you want to go (like Relay in the UK). That is unlikely to be the case with a £60 job from Kwikfit. For me, it doesn't much matter if I have to hang around in France for a week when my car is repaired - though when a large car full of stuff broke down it wasn't easy to fit it all into the little hired one we were given! When a friend broke down on the way home from the Alps the AA cover got them a hired car to Calais (3 teachers in the car at half term- no question of being able to wait for the car to be repaired), a trip on the ferry and another car the other side, and paid for her to go back to France 2 weeks later when the car was repaired.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

pam w, exactly why I asked snowyowl the question. I want full gold plated cover when I am driving alone.

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Most have a 90 day limit, the same as with insurance. I tried to upgrade my AA cover and they wanted over £360 if I went over 90 days. Balls to that, I'm just not bothering. I'll take separate cover out for motorbike tours, but on balance the savings I make on car cover will pay for a local tow to a garage many times over. With internet access on phones it's not difficult to sort something out yourself as long as you are happy to take your time over it.

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holidayloverxx, just had a look at the Kwikfit cover - if I've read it correctly the european section provides a maximum payout of £250 and a maximum of £50 for labour, within that. Not worth having, really.

Avalanche Poodle, it does make sense to carry your own risk (as always with insurance) if you can afford the time and trouble of a breakdown. If you can hang around locally, and don't have to be anywhere at any particular time, it's not a big problem. But I was glad I had cover when my clutch went in Aosta, especially as the Italian garage spoke no English at all and resolutely refused to speak any French either, though French is widely spoken in that area. My Italian is better now but was just about up to ordering a round of beers at the time. The car broke down mid-day on Friday and it wasn't ready to be picked up till 10 days later - and then had to be towed again, to an infinitely superior French Fiat dealer, because the Italian mechanic had omitted to re-fill the gearbox with oil. and then swore that he hadn't touched the gearbox (an impossibility according to the intermediaries I spoke to at the insurers and my own garage at home). I was very grateful to be able to speak to them about these really complicated things, with lots of dates and times, in English. It was still a very expensive and frustrating time, but would have been a lot more expensive and more frustrating if I'd been dealing with it entirely alone.

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pam w, Kwikfit gives £250 of roadside assistance, and then the repairs are down to you (as they always are, aren't they?) and it also gives a hire car or onward travel or hotel, repatriation if needed and a driver if needed.£250 + £50 labour will more than cover a tow off the motorway or a man with a van to fix a problem, and this meets our current needs - on our forthcoming 2-adult driver trip we would just want to be taken to a nearby Citroen agent and as we are driving through France that's straightforward, and the current car is under warranty (European). As long as we can get to our destination somehow and home again I can't see a problem. (Famous last words) OH has to be back on a certain date, but my time is more flexible. He could get the train if he had to.
I thought that was fairly comprehensive, and I have had to be repatriated before when our Citroen comprehensively broke its UK-market only gearbox in Dresden..back in 1991... so I did look at the small print! On that occasion we had to borrow a car from the Dresden Citroen garage man, find a B& B (the other side of the city) then the next day drive across the city to pick up a Europ Assistance hire car, then back across the city, at rush hour, with trams etc...to get the car back to its owner by 6pm.....then we continued our camping holiday, pausing in Aachen to change hire cars as we went into Holland, left the hire car at the ferry port, put all our camping gear into 3 trolleys and got the ship home, and picked up another UK hire car at Harwich which we kept until our car had not only been repatriated but also fixed - a new gearbox - about 3 weeks. All worked out, they paid everything, but was admittedly a bit stressful and I was 6 mos pregnant as well....!
The OP said he was staying for an extended period so I would have thought that a simple breakdown policy would be enough,as he won't need repatriating in a hurry. I would think the ADAC would do it.
At home I have an individual cover with RAC which covers me for everything in any car I travel in, and as we have classic cars that's important. Actually they don't usually break down entirely they just limp home or need a spanner ..it's just the modern ones which do with all the gadgetry! I considered extending it for foreign but it was outrageously expensive, £300! So am now covered twice on the one car.

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snowyowl, that 1991 experience sounds pretty difficult even without being pregnant! Yes, that Kwikfit cover certainly provides more than I read the first time. But the limits to what they will pay, in the various categories (e.g. for emergency accommodation, onward travel) are less than under the top level of AA cover (the AA offers different levels of cover, and the fancier ones cost more, unsurprisingly). It will also only cover young cars (under 5 years old) whereas the AA one will cover cars of any age, which is why my friend had that cover - and insisted that the others going with her shared the cost! If you have a new-ish car and can afford to hang around a bit, the cheaper policies would probably be adequate.

The ADAC cover sounds good. I get free cover for a year with my new car, but might look into the ADAC deal when that has expired.

After all it is free

We have ADAC partner plus but have not yet (and hopefully will never have to) had to use it. We also have RAC family cover (5 of us ADAC only covers 2) through Tesco clubcard points for the UK. Works out cheaper for more cover for us than any other single option I could find.

For the cheap seats, this the broker I was talking about; berakdown is available as a separate policy at £185 for a year. No limit on time in Europe. https://www.stuartcollins.com/breakdown.php Links on that page to full T&Cs.

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I have a Ford and only discovered recently that providing you have it dealer serviced, you benefit from receiving continued recovery service until the next service due date. It is the same comprehensive service you get with the car from new and includes European cover. I reckon its worth paying the premium for having the car dealer serviced for this alone.

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European Breakdown Cover

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