We have used AAA for car things…but we also use AAA for drivers license renewals. And we booked a fabulous trip to Disney with AAA a long while ago. Do they still have their travel agent service? And we got foreign money from them before departing abroad.
Some state highways only allow their own towing and roadside assistance services. They award exclusive contracts. I probably would have called 911 in your situation.
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Your post articulated very well all the reasons I dropped AAA. Since they don’t provide DMV services in NJ, I don’t have that reason either.
I prefer withdrawing from an ATM at my destination. I am pretty sure AAA can’t match that conversion rate (even with the ATM fees).
All large banks also provide foreign currency (for all major/common currencies) for a reasonable fee, with a week’s notice.
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Yeah, we get currency from the bank here - and they usually have to order it from a centralized place.. We literally don’t use AAA - other than I choose the hotel rate but that’s saving work money, moreso than me.
I know I’m wasting money - and yet for some reason, I feel compelled to do so.
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We had AAA for several years and have dropped it. The last time we used their services we had locked our keys and phones in our vehicle. We called from someone else’s phone and requested a call back on that phone. They called our phones that were locked in the car instead. We waited several hours and made additional phone calls to them with no service. We eventually called a provider ourselves. The AAA person showed up as we were getting into our car to drive off, 4 hours after our initial call.
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We also use it for off-site airport parking. That saves us $1 or $2 per day.
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@thumper1 -yes AAA does still have the travel agent service. We have booked recent trips through them.
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Not sure if it was mentioned, but in my case, I would have to add roadside assistance separately to each car with my car insurance.
With AAA, you pay by the driver and I could own 50 cars and pay the same rate.
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I do use AAA rates for hotels and always ask at museum and attraction admissions if they have a discount.
I did like the old days when you got those cool TripTix maps from AAA before you went on vacation.
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My insurance agent is at AAA. She is amazingly helpful and saved us some serious $$ on our multiple policies. The AAA insurance rates weren’t always the cheapest.
Do you own 50 cars? My rate is $1.91/month/car so <$6 a month. We’ve used the RA before and they were pretty quick since my ins card has the specific # for roadside assistance. Pretty sure they are as good as AAA for in that regard. We also have trickle chargers and jumper cables so no need for battery restarts, plus 3 working vehicles for the 2 of us. I have never locked myself out of my house. I think it’s great people really like AAA, and I truly believe they served well for a very long time - we used to have them back in the road travel days, loved the maps and the trip requests they would put together for you. I just don’t see the value today.
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We use a travel agent at AAA, along with the license renewal service. Free passport photos as well. Oh, and they change flats, jump batteries, and tow cars!
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Same! A block from home, blizzard, town towed us, aaa reimbursed.
It’s ok if you don’t use AAA. Or don’t like it. It’s not a competition. I think though that this thread is offering up some of the benefits for some of the people - maybe not you!
I’ve learned some new things that my membership might be good for on this thread. That’s valuable.
Batteries don’t just die at home they die while on vacation. Tires go flat hundreds of miles away and sometimes it’s the tire of your young adult daughter traveling alone. Sometimes the tire is your friend or family member who doesn’t have road side insurance - so your AAA will still help out since you’re traveling in the vehicle.
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In my case, all the subcontractors were declining the job. AAA was saying xxx is coming in a few minutes, ooops, they declined, yyy is coming, sorry, they too declined, …Makes me think it’s AAA not the quality of subs. We had AAA membership and insurance for over 40 years. I have a feeling their service is going downhill. I recently had to change email addresses. My email account was hacked and all the incoming email was diverted to somewhere else. I called three times. Every time, they modified something else, not change the email address. I gave up after the third try and told them to take my email entirely off from their list and gave uo the discount that comes with going paperless.
Sorry that happened to you. We have not to my memory encountered a poor service call from AAA.
They saved my a_s in Cleveland when I was due to present at a conference and had a flat tire at a hotel. They took care of it while I ran off in an uber and then texted me with completed photo when they were done.
When my husbands alternator (?) went bad driving home from my daughters rehearsal dinner out of town they came at 11:30pm to check it and tow it on Friday night and had it back in our hands (we had planned to use his vehicle to transport the bride) by 11:30am and the service shop even did a quick car wash on it since they knew our situation.
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AAA (or insurance) is generally not directly providing the emergency road service. They are subcontracting out with a local company. This makes quality variable, depending on the specific company and/or specific driver. I expect the vast majority of subcontracted organizations are acceptable, but some are not. One can list anecdotal examples of both exceptionally good and exceptionally poor quality service with AAA (or insurance).
For example, one towing service AAA uses has almost entirely 1 star ratings by real customers on Yelp with comments about not arriving after waiting 3+ hours (common issue, mentioned in many reviews), drivers not speaking any English, damaging cars by dragging tires and wearing transmission with car in park when towing and/or hooking car improperly, charging tow driver’s meals to customer’s credit card, texting on phone while driving, driving female to deserted parking lot in tow truck then hitting on her, throwing away customer’s phone and breaking it after customer refused to pay extra and tried to call AAA to confirm no extra charges, and even stealing a towed car leading to police report being filed.
I haven’t experienced any of the above, but the towing services AAA uses in my area that I am familiar with all have far better reviews/comments from customers than the tow company described above. My only major issue with a AAA service call was the car damage from jack dropping I mentioned earlier. The local tow company affiliated with the tow driver handled the repair, which I expect would have cost thousands at an area body shop.
When my DH’s car was run off the road by a distracted highway driver a few years ago, we tried both AAA and USAA for towing. We were on the inside emergency lane (construction area) of a busy highway. Not a great place to be. Both AAA and USAA said it would be a 2 hour wait. The police called a towing company and they were there in under 20 minutes.
I wish our police would get such a response. Over the years we’ve had to have the police come and get cars towed blocking our driveway. Takes the Police 30-60 min to show (the station is 1 mile away) and another 60 minutes for the tow truck. Not fun when you’re trying to get to work
We have all our insurance with AAA, car, home, umbrella in addition to the membership. For over 40 years. I have a heavy inertia and dislike changes but I am slowly looking around to replace AAA.