The AA damaged my car, deny responsibility and now wont pay for repair.

[jimborae]

So... just had an email from the AA saying that they are continuing with their investigations but, and I quote:

"prepared to settle your claim as a gesture of good will.

As a result, I can confirm I have no objections to you proceeding with the mechanical repairs in accordance with the estimate supplied and forwarding the invoice for prompt reimbursement under the policy or, alternatively, if the repairers are prepared to submit their invoice to the AA and I will send a repair authority to go ahead with repairs."

So does this count as a result? or should I still proceed with caution and get the repairers to deal direct with the AA?

Cheers

J

[GoNz0]

Obviously it is a result.

[jimborae]

The gesture of goodwill bit still winds me up a bit, like they're the good guys and are doing me a favour. I think they know they're in the wrong and that I believe I have enough evidence to prove it, so why cant they the just be gracious and apologise for damaging my pride & joy, pay for the repairs and we can both move on.

[jimborae]

Obviously it is a result.

Yeah that's a result clearly but a guess I'm just asking what is the safest way to proceed. I don't want to be out of pocket for £400 around Xmas but equally I'm not to keen on losing control of this and having the repair company dealing direct with the AA.

[GoNz0]

The email would stand up in court, they are willing to repair but not to admit liability, standard BS so I would just be glad they are going to pay and proceed however you want.
They are not going to admit liability on behalf of a 3rd party who fooled the mrs into signing the pda.

The AA did nothing wrong, the 3rd party did.

[jimborae]

The email would stand up in court, they are willing to repair but not to admit liability, standard BS so I would just be glad they are going to pay and proceed however you want.
They are not going to admit liability on behalf of a 3rd party who fooled the mrs into signing the pda.

The AA did nothing wrong, the 3rd party did.

True & I understand that, I just feel that if I hadn't been able to send them a paper copy of the initial patrolman's report, detailing no damage, this would have ended going to court. I.e. they would not accepted my partners version of events or what she says was on the the PDA.

I fully accept that this was not the AA fault and it seems as though they have been caught out by the recovery company trying to pull a fast one, I just would have liked for them to have initially acted in their members best interest and hopefully they will think twice about using this company in the future. (I know I'm probably living in cloud cuckoo land here. )

[GoNz0]

And this is why you should always sign your name as not-checked with couriers/drivers

At least that is what we had to do in my last job.

[scaryjim]

Hello, we'd like the opportunity to investigate this. Please email chat @ theaa . com with your details including membership number, full name and contact number. We will be happy to address this. Please title your email with reference REF201474. We look forward to hearing from you. Kind Regards.

Just approved the above post from (apparently) The AA, offering to help out. Obviously you've got a result since this was posted, but given someone at the AA has gone to the effort of registering to post a response I felt it was important that is was seen.

It might be worth dropping them an email with your reference and the one above so they can cross reference and shut the case...

[peterb]

It's a positive result. You will need to approve the repair anyway, so I would check that the repairer will deal directly with the AA. Whether the AA then pursue their sub-contractor is a matter for them and strictly not your concern.

The AA have fulfilled their obligation to you -albeit without admitting liability - which is what you were asking for.

[GoNz0]

It does make you wonder if they saw this thread before deciding to play ball, something we will never know for sure!

[Saracen]

The gesture of goodwill bit still winds me up a bit, like they're the good guys and are doing me a favour. I think they know they're in the wrong and that I believe I have enough evidence to prove it, so why cant they the just be gracious and apologise for damaging my pride & joy, pay for the repairs and we can both move on.

While that phrase is a bit grating, I wouldn't read too much into it. It's a standard form of words. There's been one or two occasions I've used it myself, just to get a problem that wasn't worth fighting to go away.

So grating or not, were it me, I'd just take them up on it.

After all, if you don't, it really amounts to fighting on over .... what? Hurt feelings? A sense of justice?

And should you fight on, remember what I said about judges wanting BOTH sides to do everything reasonable before going to court. You may still win the claim, but judges are apt to respond to having their time wasted by exercising judgement over, for example, items in their discretionary power like court costs and qualifying expenses.

No, I know you well enough, Jim, to know that even if a bit miffed, you're more pragmatic than that. It is just a boilerplate bit of jargon and though a bit irritating, I wouldn't read anything untoward into the "goodwill" remark. All it probably really means is that someone, perhaps a bit more senior, or on a second-line team, has looked again and decided that given apparent facts, it's better to just settle than spend time, effort and money investigating to the point where they want to pay up and formally admit liability.

For my part, I'd take it, get the car sorted and move on with life.


Oh, and re: the post in this thread purportedly from The AA, while it's in the nature of net life to be a bit ( or a lot) sceptical about such things, and phishing takes myriad forms, my brief look at it suggests it is entirely genuine. If it isn't, someone has gone to considerable lengths to set it up, as even IP WhoIs data resolves correctly.

On that basis, and on behalf of HEXUS, welcome The AA. And thanks for sorting out the problem.

[Macman]

AA going the extra mile. Badda tshhh.

/exits

[jimborae]

@ Saracen

Yeah not going to fight any further on this just over a bit of wording and hurt feelings, I'll take their offer and get it fixed. It's just their initial attitude of the risk team that got my back up, a real "computer says no" type conversation with a very unsatisfactory response. Quite unlike the first customer care agent I spoke to at the begining who was very good, which I guess just led me to believe I would get the same level care the further up the chain I went. It wasn't till I mentioned to the risk team that I had signed a form stating that there was no damage that they were willing to investigate further and then after my partner spoke to them stating that she only signed a POD device and that couldn't have shown the supposed form and damage and then I was a able to produce a paper copy of the initial patrolman's report did things start to change.

Good customer service means the damage shouldn't have happened in the first place, and once it had everything should have been done to put it right without me having to go through all this stress to get the correct outcome.

So thank you to the AA for posting here (I hadn't actually seen their response here when I posted my report of the outcome, post 17), you got there in the end, but you may want to have a word with your risk team about how to improve genuine customer complaint handling.

And thanks to everyone else for your contributions.

[TeePee]

It's interesting how Hexus seems to have become an automotive forum. Just look at all the 'My car won't start, help!' threads we get from new posters, and now stalked by the AA. There's some kind of search engine listing, somewhere.

Good to see a resolution. The last complaint I had against a company, they folded after I filed an Arbitration, 'as a courtesy'. That language choice was pretty annoying, as there was no courtesy at any point. Their attorney was just plain rude.

[scaryjim]

It's interesting how Hexus seems to have become an automotive forum. ... There's some kind of search engine listing, somewhere. ...

It may have changed in recent algorithm updates, but Google always used to rank sites with rapidly changing content and lots of traffic more highly than relatively static ones. Since Hexus tends to be a pretty active community, it does well in Google rankings pretty much across the board - the stated focus of the forum is kind of irrelevant.

[Saracen]

It's interesting how Hexus seems to have become an automotive forum. ....

I'd say it was commonplace. Most forums start out with some sort of focus, but as soon as a community of regulars develops, they start to develop other common areas of interest. I once started, with a friend, a whole forum because the forum we were both mods on wasn't (at that time) interested in a photography and digital photography sub-forum, and we were. So we did our own. And before long, it too had motoring, and a host of other sections.