Tag Archives: AA

Insurance, Illusion and Infamy

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Also see here.

Insurance, you say?

When I took on breakdown cover from Green Flag just four years ago, it cost me, as I recall, about £60. The AA were asking a lot more. I think it was about £250, though it may have been more. That was my “reward” for being with the AA for 38 years. When I rang to complain about their new member prices a few years previously  they basically told me to get lost, as there was no reduction for me, just a lifetime of servitude as a cash cow. I put up with it a while longer, as I am always a little afraid of changing insurance companies, but their prices rose and my standard of living fell, so I had to do something.

When I rang to cancel they offered me a better deal, based on the same deal they were currently doing for new members. I told him they should have thought of that when I had originally asked, as they had now pushed me to the point of no return.

Green Flag, which I have used to help with tyre changes twice in four years has been good, but they have doubled in price in four years, well ahead of the rate of inflation. This is even more noticeable as i hardly use the car these days.

St George – enamel on a Crown coin

I am now with Britannia, who are providing my cover for £99, about £30 less than Green Flag. Ironically, the AA, which does not seem to have gone up over the years, has a half price offer on and would have provided this cover for £110 – slightly less than Green Flag. Even the full rate appears to be lower than the price I paid four years ago. I won’t, of course, go back to the AA at the moment, because I’m still annoyed with their piratical pricing practices. The RAC has just had an offer that came in around the £99 mark. In their case I passed because I had arranged to transfer to them but they didn’t contact me to arrange it at the agreed time. You don’t want breakdown insurance with a company that might forget you, do you?

Something I find very interesting is that both the AA and RAC have comparison websites to telll you how much better they are than Green Flag and Britannia. I take these sites, and the special offers, to mean that more and more people are buying on cost these days.

When I told Green Flag I would not be renewing, guess what they said? Yes, straight from the playbook – they could reduce the price for me if that would get me to stay.

Car insurance companies are now supposed to offer the same price to existing customers as they do to new customers. This doesn’t seem to be the case with breakdown insurance. In fact I just looked this up – the new rules apply to car and household insurance, but testing the market still seems to indicate that you can get a discount by shopping around.

I remember a cartoon from many years ago – one City banker saying to another, “No, they didn’t banks can “police” themselves, they said banks can “please” themselves.” Same, I suspect, for insurance companies.

It was the Alex strip in The Independent but I can’t find the actual cartoon. Some of these are quite funny too. And these. And these . . .

St George – enamel on a Crown coin

Medallic Meanderings – The Automobile Association (2000)

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There’s no point letting the work I did on the medallion talk go to waste, so here is some of it reused as a blog post. Not every one will lend itself to use as a blog post, unless the post is on the subject of curing insomnia, but some will stand on their own.

The medal is, as collectors like to know, issued by the Automobile Association, 45mm in diameter and made from a metal that isn’t easy to identify. It’s copper in colour but likely to be a cheap alloy rather than pure copper. An alloy, because it needs to resist scratching and similar things and cheap because that is the modern way. To be fair, in a world where accountants govern our lives, we are lucky that anyone still bothers to make medals. On the other hand, when you look at what they charged me for membership over the years, they could afford it.

AA Medallion 1905-2000

The reverse is plain with as tablet in the middle and the number 1,400 stamped on it. We originally had several others in the shop, with a  mix of numbers. I selected this one because I like numbers with noughts on the end.

The obverse bears the dates 1905 – 2000 above an old-fashioned AA telephone box. The box itself is over the new AA logo (the old one can be seen on the front of the box (it used to look a bit like an owl to me), I have no photo, but this link shows several varieties.

The figures represent an AA patrolman of the 1920s  on the left and a modern one on the right.

In 2000 the AA demutualised and became just another public company, which is why the medallion celebrates 95 years instead of a centenary, as would be usual. During that time the number of cars on the road rose from approximately 1,000 to 27,200,000. In 2020 we had  32,7000,000. That’s a lot more cars, needing a lot more roads. Originally you used to buy petrol from the pharmacy, but as more cars appeared more people started to sell it. In 1919 the AA opened the first filling station in the UK. I didn’t know that until I looked it up to chek some fats before writing this post. This just goes to show the educational benefits of collecting medallions.