Cheap Breakdown Cover Insurance Plans

Cheap breakdown cover is a highly competitive car business over in UK. For example, even though AA breakdown cover had an estimated 13 million policy members in UK, there are about 1 in every 4 active drivers on the roads without any adequate protection in case their vehicle encounters a problem and cannot move.

Some may think that they are able to resolve simple problems such as burst tires, flat batteries, etc by keeping a set of spare tire, car jack, spanner, charging cables etc. However, do you think you have the presence of mind to replace a tire in the middle of night on a deserted road or in the midst of heavy traffic during peak hours on the highway?

Furthermore, new cars are increasingly reliant on electronic and computerized assistive systems and if one of these goes down, there is no way you can resolve the problem by yourself. Do you know where to seek help if you are currently in the middle of nowhere and its now 3am in the morning?

Maybe the drivers without roadside assistance cover are not fully aware, but cheap vehicle breakdown insurance is available from only £26 per annum by Tesco car insurance. It is less than a meal out in a good restaurant.

Perhaps the main reason why many drivers do not have any cheap breakdown cover is due to their misunderstanding on the benefits range of their basic liability insurance. The latter is the minimum required by traffic laws before you are even allowed to drive on the roads while break down cover is optional. However, many comprehensive car insurance plans included some form of vehicle breakdown cover as bundled benefits and this cause many drivers to get confused and think that their liability insurance also provides roadside recovery. That is of course a wrong perception and maybe all the major insurers should have done so with their service offerings since including cheap car break down cover hardly cost more than 10% of the original insurance premiums.

Roadside Recovery

The next confusion arises from the different levels of car breakdown cover available. If you are not aware of this, you may end up receiving no assistance when you call for help or must pay extra for the services rendered. That is why you need to be careful when you buy into that cheap breakdown cover when the truth is that it may not be so cheap after all in the long run when certain important rescue & repair services are not supported. Firstly, the cheapest car mechanical breakdown insurance that is always included is the so called roadside recovery.

When you have problems getting your car to move, a mechanic will be sent to your location to help you continue driving on the road again. From the statistics given by RAC breakdown cover insurance, around 80% of such calls can be effectively resolved by their dispatched mechanics. These are mostly the minor problems such as a flat car batteries, overheated engines, flat tires and so on. When you are buying only roadside recovery insurance, be aware that most have a minimum distance from home requirement before they will help. For example, Tesco breakdown cover will only send car recovery assistance if you vehicle breaks down at a location that is more than 1/4 miles away from your registered residential address. So are we supposed to manually push our cars further away for another few tens of yards before roadside car assistance is available?

Actually, this rule is designed to sell their next level of cheap breakdown cover or to differentiate their services. For example, AA Insurance's home start rescue provides assistance if your car is stuck in your car park at home. This actually happens in about 25% of all breakdown cases, and can even insure you against losing your keys and getting locked out from your cars. Other common problems that can be resolved with home recovery cover include the usual cases of flat tires and batteries after you forgot to switch of the head lights throughout the night.

Breakdown Repair Cover

Note that if the mechanic is unable to get your broken car moving again, you can choose to have onwards transportation cover that will pay off helping you reach your intended destination. This can be in the form of a courtesy hire car or reimbursements for public transports such as hailing a cab. Meanwhile your car will be towed to the nearest garage for more in depth investigation and servicing. At this stage, you may require breakdown repair cover to pay for replacement parts and garage labor incurred at the garage. There are many cases where very expensive repair bills were issued to unsuspecting car owners after their broken down vehicles were towed away by the car recovery mechanics.

Women Car Insurance

Cheap breakdown cover insurance is especially popular with women drivers. Because they are less inclined to try and deal with a car machinery problem, they tend to buy adequate breakdown recovery coverage together with women car insurance to avoid any inconveniences and dangerous situations that can happen when their cars is broken down and they are stranded. Many insurers do make special provisions for such as vulnerable situations to offer priority response over other cases being handled at the same time.

Unlike your standard car insurance, car break down cover is bought only on a particular vehicle, regardless of the driver(s). If you own a car and a van, you need to buy two separate rescue cover plans. However, there are several users sharing the same car, only one cheap breakdown cover is sufficient. It does not matter who is driving the car at the moment and they are all authorized to call in for requesting car breakdown services.

Compare Breakdown Cover

When you compare breakdown cover plans from various companies, one important aspect is how fast you can get the response team to repair your car calling for help. Both AA and RAC breakdown cover utilizes their dedicated team of patrol cars to ply the highways every day. This ensures that they are able to reach you no matter where you are located within 40 minutes.

On the other hand, Green Flag breakdown insurance relies on a network of garages and workshop mechanics distributed through UK to support policy holders. When you call for help, they will select the nearest garage within their network and forward your request to them.

Green Flag breakdown is confident on reaching you within a guaranteed 30 minutes and offers a £10 cash back in case they are late. This claim is based on the collaboration of regional mechanics who knows the roads and traffic conditions of their neighborhood well enough to use all possible short cut routes towards where you are waiting.

Do note that smaller companies such as Green Flag and Tesco breakdown cover etc do not have their own fleet of patrol mechanics and garages, which mean these are not their dedicated workforce. Correspondingly, AA and RAC breakdown cover have the largest support force and also costs more compared to the other insurers.

European Breakdown Cover

If you need European breakdown cover and car insurance, choosing a bigger company is probably a better idea as well since they have more established relations with other cheap breakdown cover insurance and services abroad which often leads to a smoother roadside rescue experience.