Banbury woman left stranded after RAC refuse to attend breakdown over danger concerns

Anne Cooper was travelling home on the A361 last month (Thursday, November 23) at around 10.30pm when her Nissan Note car suddenly juddered to a halt just past South Newington.

With red lights showing and the car not starting properly, Anne and her partner Marcus got the car as far on the grass verge as possible and, as a member of the RAC, she called them to assist her.

Anne said: “I rang the RAC, and the person on the phone bluntly said it was too dangerous for them to come out and that we would have to call the police to make it safe.

"So we rang the police, and these two marvellous officers turned up in just under an hour. They then put big flashing lights around the car so that other road users could not miss us.

"We thought that we had made it pretty safe, so we called the RAC again, and they point blank refused to come out. We told them it had been made safe by the police, but they still wouldn’t help us.”

Anne says that the police were then forced to call for one of their own breakdown vehicles to collect her car and take it back to a vehicle recovery compound in Carterton.

She said: “I was only five or six miles from home, and now my car was stuck in a compound in Carterton, which cost me £192 to release.

"I was just amazed at the RAC’s attitude. It was only a small road with little traffic; it wasn’t that dangerous. It was cold, dark, and raining, and not very pleasant. I don’t know how they can justify it.

“On top of that, it was a shocking waste of police time; we don’t pay our taxes so that the police can fill in for breakdown companies. It wasn’t an accident, and there was no real danger. I felt really guilty that I was wasting their time.”

The RAC did reimburse Anne for the recovery costs and offered her compensation as a gesture of goodwill, but the Banbury woman says that she would have much preferred to have a breakdown recovery service she knew she could rely upon.

Anne said: “We didn’t get home until after one o’clock in the morning; it was not ideal. You just want to know that you can rely on a system that you are paying for to assist you. The experience with the RAC left me feeling worried about using my car.

A spokesperson for the RAC said: “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to attend Anne due to the dangerous location of her car. We apologise for not being able to help on this occasion and appreciate it must have been a difficult situation.

"We have now reimbursed Anne for the police recovery costs and will be providing an additional gesture of goodwill.”