AAA Call Converted

[TowZone]

12-07-05, THTDon said,

Back when I was with AAA, I remember that it clearly stated in the Member's Manual that AAA was an emergency service, not a convenience service. And an unregistered car was not covered by AAA. Then, for a few years, they got very liberal, and would cover just about anything. If you asked for them to tow a Radio Flyer wagon, they would do it. Things have gone a full circle now. The last time that I was on police rotation, I observed the AAA driver inform the member that they would not accept his AAA membership card because the unregistered car was not covered. Unfortunately, the AAA tower got to charge the car owner cash- a call that we should have gotten. So now, we will inform people that ask us to call AAA for them when we know that they are not covered, in an effort to achieve the secondary tow for ourselves. Last night, a guy drove in with a pickup truck with a snowplow, looking to put air in his tires. After he did that, he was unable to get the pickup started again. He asked to use the phone, so he could call AAA. After he called them, they called me, to make sure that the pickup was properly registered. I told them that it was, as we didn't tow it in, it drove in on it's own. As Norm once said on Cheers, "It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear!".

 

Towingguy said:

The evil empire is operated on the seven second rule. Call them seven seconds later and you will get a different storey. Definatly no consistancy. We wont tow their vehicle if it isnt registered, not in an operational condition such as no engine or tranny, or if it is modified such as a low rider, or over sized tires. If they wont enforce their own contracted rules, then we will. Then it is our full cash price. No discount just because they are waving that damn little card around. If they are in an accident, chances are they are going to be paying some cash anyways. Unless we can pull right up to their vehicle and hook up with no problem and they did their own clean up, their membership wont cover the cost. That really upsets the customer. Gregg WM010022

 

Auto Rescue said:

That's odd I've been converting non entitled service calls to cash calls for over 26 years now with no problems from 3A about it, I'm here to make money not enjoy what I'm doing.

 

THTDon said:

Like I said, this local club has been somewhat liberal in recent years. I have observed the AAA vendor convert the AAA call to a cash call right in front of me. It is my intention to circumvent all of that, and keep that second call for myself. Since I know what they will cover, and what they won't, I'll take advantage of it.

 

In Closing: This is the major reason that I am glad that I am no longer affiliated with AAA. When I was with AAA, I would not accept the membership card for someone to bail out their car after getting arrested, DWI, for parking violations, such as snow removal, etc., or anything along those lines. People that got towed for snow removal routinely went to the AAA office and submitted the tow invoice for reimbursement. They would give the member the money, and deduct it from my check. Problem is, my driver made more of a commission, than I got paid for the call in the end. At the time of our parting, we were getting paid $13 for a basic AAA call, and $90 for a basic police call, including the city fee of $15. AAA would refund the $90 to the member, deduct the $90 from my check, and then pay me $13 for the call. So I was out of pocket $12 for the call, plus another $15 for the city fee. And my driver was getting a commission of $25 for the call at the time. You do the math.

 

I had some rubber stamps made that say "Obstructing Plowing", "Obstructing Sweeping", etc. for each of the popular infractions, with the hope that some of these claims would get denied. That seemed to work. People often would come in, asking that we rewrite the tow invoice, without the stamped message on it. No dice. (I was told long ago that you cannot write DWI on a tow invoice, as a reason for the tow, because none of us are legally qualified to determine that a driver is legally intoxicated. So we just write "Operator Arrested".)