Greenflag Mayday - a cautionary tale

Having been members of GreenflagMayday for a number years and having cause to use them a couple of times they have until now proven to be an excellent service, on time, courteous recovery agents, care taken with vehicles etc.  I have in the past paid compliments to their service.


However, things have changed, read on and see what you think, maybe I've missed something.

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Level of cover is their top package (just over £130 when recently renewed, Includes getting the van along with the car either to a holiday destination (if pre-booked) or back home if it's a return journey etc...


August came and we travelled 200 miles to our Holiday destination in the South of England,  the tow car, the caravan and another car (we prefer to have use of two cars when that far from home)


3 days before we were due to travel home the Tow Car developed a major fault when on site, oil pressure said low/stop, the  fault is probably an oil feed blocked/oil pump ceased, certainly not fixable at the roadside, contacted the dealership they said 'do not start the car until it's been diagnosed, it sounds like a major fault with the oil pump/feeder
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As it was so close to the end of the Holiday and a bit of faffing about with Greenflag we booked them to recover the vehicle and the Caravan back home on the evening before our holiday was to end, so no real time loss.

Greenflags appointed agent promptly turned up in the 1 hour window, winched the tow car on to the back of the truck, hitched the Van to the rear of the truck.  After speaking to the agent he stated he was running out of hours and would be changing over the van/vehicle at a service station 90miles further up the road. We gave him the keys to the car and the Caravan and requested that at 'no point in the journey should the car be started unless it was absolutely essential but instead where possible please use the winch.

The Agent set off  as did we, we went a different direction in the spare car to fuel up. Later on we decided to stop at the services where the recovery 'relay' was to change over, by the time we'd had a coffee our Car/Van arrived at the services.  Spoke to the agent, he said 'yeah, just  have to wait for the other guy to turn up'

We took our leave and travelled home the other 110 miles arriving home at 3am, during the course of the morning we'd received automated updates from greenflag telling us a tehcnician would be with us by such and such a time, we took this as the relay agents picking up the vehcle/van and each time they did we'd get text.

In all we'd gotten 4 messages from the time we left the van at the first services...although we got home at 3am we didn't expect the towcar/van to be there, we expected it would be delayed due to change overs 

Now comes the first issue, we mistakingly left our house keys in the Caravan safe, so we were sat outside home and resigned ourselves to waiting for the van. At 3:34am we get an automated message to say technician will be with you by 4:43, such is life but the children were asleep, we were outside home so we surfed our phones, no big deal and essentially our fault.

At 5am with no vehicle showing we called Greenflag for a status update, .after them putting us on hold they returned 10 mins later to tell us that the Car/Van had just turned up at another services some 70 miles from us and had been placed in a secure compound until 7am ...a driver had ran out of hours, there was no one else that could take it (whats the point of the relay?) and they wouldn't know until 7:30am as to when we would get our vehicle/van back?

At no point we were not told any of this via text messages, to make matters worse the servivces it was at was nowhere near us and was not on the jouney home, it was altogether off route and in essence between 12am when we last saw our vehicles at the first services it had travelled 85miles but in an altogether non relevant route...had it travelled 85miles towards us from the first services it would have been just 22 miles from our home but instead it was 70miless away in a different direction.

Greenflag stated they would phone us at 7.30am to let us know what was going on, I had to remind them that we'd been home since 3am ...without our house keys (our fault) with one of us requiring morphine medication at 7am etc. .To say nothing of our fridge in the caravan slowly defrosting given the leisure battery would have been drained.


With no house keys and no idea what time our van would be back with us and although tired from driving 4 hours at 5:30am we drove a further 80 miles round trip to a family member where we picked up our spare house keys and then drove back home.

Greenflag phoned at 7.25am and said that they had gotten an update and our vehicle/van would be with us by 10am, Given we'd been up all night, a good amount of it driving and we were going to have to wait another 2.5hrs for the vehicle/van....well you can imagine how tired we were, but thankfully we'd been able to put the children to bed so sat up and waited for Greenflag to arrive which they did a little after 9am.

We took delivery of the car and the van but minus the caravans main door key (explained further down)


But here is where it gets worse and where I consider GreenFlag/Mayday  to have acted in an altogether irresponsible & unprofessional manner,  they broke just about every rule book and placed us in an impossible situation, it could have gone so very very wrong.

As stated previous, we left our keys for the towcar and the van with the first agent, you'll recall we met him at a services at the end of his relay part and where he was waiting for the next driver to turn up,  NOT SO, after speaking with Greenflag just after they dropped our vehicles with us at home at 9am and when chasing them up on the phone re the missing caravan key they went off to find out what had happened and when 'we' called them back close to 10am it turns out that the first agent had left our towcar and caravan on the services car park and gone home, this was our car and our caravan that we trusted in the hands of Greenflag but where it had been left unattended/unhitched and not in any compound (the service station in question doesnt have one) and left the keys on the rear tyre of the towcar....SAY WHAT!!!!   


The one place you do not leave a caravan unattended is on a motorway services....we don't even do that when we're travelling, there is always one of us with the vehicle while the other grabs a coffee or whatever and yet here GreenFlags left half of our life in the van insecure, no hitch, no wheel clamp, exposed to whomever and with the keys for everything on the rear wheel of the car.

Thankfully nothing untoward happened (apart from a dent appearing on the van that we know nothing about), but this is not the service we signed up, it goes against just about every security precaution going and in the eventuality of our caravan and it's contents going missing we would have had no valid claim with our caravan insurers, no hitch lock, no wheel clamp and the keys readily available to the thieves.

Add this to the already shoddy service of relays not working out, or vehicle arriving home much later than expected and where it had been left in an insecure state at one services and then in a secure compound at another but one that was altogether off the beaten track (by 70 miles) and with no explanation offered by greenflag as to what went wrong with the relays....well understandably we're pretty angry.


The keys for the caravan and the Towcar were on seperate rings , the main caravan door key is on it's own clip on the caravan keys but it's easily sperated for convenience reasons, that key has not arrived back with the van, so we're having to change the barrel, the freezer had defrosted leaving water on the caravan floor by the fridge door (we usually leave a towel at the bottom of the fridge just in case the leisure battery expires and as was the case here due to the first agent requesting the motor mover be used to pull the van from it's pitch), there is a dent on the van (not major but it's a definite dink and larger than the average stone chip,it wasn't there when we last saw the van and no recovery agent had marked it as such on their jobsheets.

Further to that and worringly is the car that we requested not be driven had by the time we got it back a further 2/10ths of a mile, it is impossible to drive without ignition on so pushing it around a car park would not have applied, it seems that whoever picked it up at the second services or maybe the third relay or even the fourth..who knows) has driven it/started the engine and as such there is now a very noticeable clattering from the engine bay, something there wasn't when we parked it up when it first broke down, it sounds like the turbo has given up, this is the first thing that gets it should the oil pump cease/feeder pipe blocked and the car driven like it.

We have registered all of this as a complaint with Greenflag, not sure who else to raise it with but may take legal action against them. At this point in time I will not name the recovery agents involved ( I know who they are) 


We get how a relay works, we get that sometimes drivers run out of hours, we get that it's not an exact science for when you get your vehicle back but do not get why the alleged professionals of Greenflag acted in the way in which this particular breakdown recover appears to have gone.


We would suggest that anyone choosing Mayday/Greenflag as their breakdown recovery think long and hard as to if they want to place their money with them, not just their money but some of their life also (caravan and it's contents) and if you do choose to spend your money with them and you do have cause to trust them to bring your vehicle/van back home on a relay then try and make sure (if you're not travelling with it) that you know where your vehicle is at all times and further to that, Greenflag are not altogether good at getting back in touch with you, so when they say they're going to and you then don't hear from them, then chase them.


On a personal note, when you're away for a few weeks and your vehicle breaks down, the idea of breakdown cover is to provide peace of mind that when things are outside of your control the professionals take over and look after your interests, in this instance these alleged professionals (Greenflag/Mayday) have failed an on an magnificent level.

We left home and spent 3 enjoyable weeks on holiday hoping to return home batteries recharged and ready to drop back into reality but instead we came home to a malestrom and a shed load of stress and to add insult to injury we paid for that stress both financially (renewal fees)/caravan locks/ cleaning up the caravan and possibly an aggravated fault on the tow car) along with perso nal stress of having to deal with it all when we first get home.



Greenflag/Mayday you have failed.