Mayday/ Green Flag - recent experience...👍
Some of you may have read elsewhere that out car 'died' whilst at our daughters in the Outer Hebrides, and we had to be recovered home.. Fortunately we have Green Flag/ Mayday cover and they sorted us out I thought it might be useful to give an account of how things panned out.
We started to lose power in the car on the journey up. The car began to lose power at Fort William. We drove on to Spean Bridge and pulled over to call Mayday/ Green Flag, just the other side of Spean, at 1am, in tbe pouring rain, with no lights, cars, houses anywhere in sight. The local garage got to us and checked out the car as best as possible. He seemed to tbink the problem was a sensor (to do with air flow/ mixture). He disconnected something and told us to get the sensor replaced when we got to Lewis. We did this ourselves when we arrived (easy job).
Unfortunately, this didn't solve the problem, so we tried several garages on Lewis ourselves. No-one could do anything for us for 4/5 weeks, except one garage who agreed to take a look. After various tests/ diagnostics he reckoned it was a cracked manifold (its plastic on the Discovery 4), but he couldn't do more/ repair in the time we had. Our only option was to contact Mayday/ Green Flag again for recovery home at the end of our stay.
Our ferry crossing for the journey home was last Thursday morning, so this is what happened. The Green Flag assigned us a 'co-ordinator' to sort it for us.
Wednesday afternoon: Car picked up and transported from our daughters house on Lewis, down to the Ferry port. We followed in the daughters car to pick up the keys and return to daughters for overnight stay.
Thursday: borrowed daughters car to get to ferry port (she picked up the car later). Drove my car onto the ferry (in limp mode) and off the other side. Another tow truck was waiting at the ferry port on Skye. They dropped of a hire car for us so we could travel home and took away my car to transport home in stages.
Friday: we arrived home in the hire car.
Saturday: dropped off the hire car to their unit in Tamworth
Monday (today): phone call from Green Flag to let us know that the car would be arriving at the garage here tomorrow.
Problems we had to overcome: The recovery firm could only recover the car to the port on the Wednesday and neither the Green Flag or ourselves could find a taxi firm to take us to Tarbert from our daughters at the time we needed so she volunteered the use of her car. Also, after the recovery vehicle had taken my car from the ferry port on Skye, it took us the first 20 minutes to work out how to 'work' all the different settings and buttons on the hire car. An instruction maunal might have been useful
The only cost to us was the fuel we put in the hire car. Not sure if I can claim that back, but I would have paid fuel costs anyway. On the whole, we were pleased and really thankful with the service from the Green Flag. It was never going to be a straightforward recovery from the Outer Hebrides - I don't know what we would have done without them. Just thankful we were not towing the caravan!!
David
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Given the logistics of that operation, I think things ran as well as you could have hoped for, David. Now it’s ‘only’ the repair to organise.
I saw a news item this morning where the RAC allocated a breakdown call out in Orkney to an RAC operative in Devon…..🤷🏻♂️
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indeed, TW. I don't know what we'd have done without them.
Just had another update phone call from them.... Apparently, they are in front of schedule and the car was due to arrive today. I expained to the gentleman on the phone (I think he was from Scotland), that it's a Bank Holiday today in England and the garage would be closed. He's arranged for the car to be kept overnight at a local recovery company, and to be delivered to our local repairers tomorrow.
David
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You couldn’t really ask for more, David, unless it’s to pay the garage bill for you 😀
We had a similar experience once when our 4250kg coachbuilt MH had to be carried home from near Loch Lomond with our car trailer on tow behind while we drove home to Cornwall in our Ford Ka along with our dog and as many of our worldly goods as we could cram on board. That’s not something I’d want to repeat.
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That is extreme. Mind, back in the 90’s, we had double trouble whilst on a trip down to Dorset. Range Rover had some fault, I can’t recall what now, but Green Flag duly turned up and quickly sorted us out whilst we were on the M1. Couple of days later, we were happily on a pitch at Crossways, and a different issue with RR happened. We got the same Green Flag rescue chap, who was based in Leeds! Again, thankfully, nothing major. Then the blasted vehicle wouldn’t come out of steering lock. I think we just hammered in into submission on that occurrence. It was “moved along” traded in for a Defender after we got home.
Glad you got home DSB, hope the repairs go ok.🙂
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Thanks TTDA. The car should have arrived at the garage in Tamworth now... I'll ring them and check in a mo. Thery're doing my service & MOT too, so I'll certainly need to have a lie down when I get the bill!! Fortunately, it'll be a few weeks before I get it back as they're chock-a. Give me chance to save up!
David
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I wish our experience was as good as yours. Prior to this incident we never had issues with Mayday.
We were away for a few days and near the end of our stay while out and about, the car totally died on us and nothing would work. The only thing we could do was open the doors. Anyway contacted Mayday to advise them of our predicament and were told that a breakdown truck would be sent. We advised that as it was permanent 4x4 drive a flatbed would be required.
Unfortunately more than 4 hours later we were still waiting with vehicle in a dangerous position as it died while driving along. We had our dog with us which complicated matters as we had to leave the doors open on the vehicle for any air flow.
Eventually they did arrive and things went sort of smoothly thereafter. They took the vehicle back to the campsite and arranged to collect it 2 days later. They collected the vehicle and caravan, dropped caravan off at our storage and took vehicle back to our house as garages were closed. Vehicle was collected the next day and taken to franchised dealership 25 miles away.
Our main complaint was the very long wait when they were probably not very busy. Also the flatbed had to travel a distance of over 100 miles although there were several large towns and cities within a 20 mile radius?
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