claiming from the AA

[bluequattro]

Last weekend the disco spat all its water out of the header tank.
I ve not got a sniffer so i drove it a mile from home and rang the AA.
Patrol came out and tested the system.
Pressure ok, no gases in water on sniffer test, then he checks the rad cap.
Says its not holding pressure and thats why its spat the water out.
He says get a new cap and it ll be ok. F|ollows me to spares place to get one, none in.
i ask him if its ok to drive home, he says if water in its ok, get another cap and will be fine, got another cap later in the day from bmw, same fit and pressure etc.
Didn t over heat for a day, then went about 25 miles and it spat the water.
Took it to local garage after topping up.
Sniff test straight away said head gasket gone.
They ve pulled it apart and the head is scrap, cracks in it.
recon head £750 + vat, plus their labour doing the work.
AA rang Friday night-a survey about their service.
Told them what i thought of it ( being polite of course)
They ve sent me letter today asking for more details and evidence for my claim(?)
Anyone experienced probs with AA or similar and had them stump up for repairs?
I acted thick and lacking in mechanical knowledge to the patrol man and on the phone, hoping they will pay the bill.
I asked the patrol man 3 times if he thought it was ok to drive once cap replaced, said yes, so as a professional I took him at his word.
Worse still i ve had to drive my mum s B*W since then and I hate autos!

[bluequattro]

ps.
forgot to say but to add insult to injury i had an email from a marketing company last week offering me money for 2 links on my website, one of which is for the AA!
May have to charge them a lot more for the ad!

[s2_bo]

Get all you can IMO.

Forward them the bill or estimated bill from the garage and then call them and get them to agree they will pay the repair. They may argue though that hte head was already scrap as its spat its water before, that's all debatable though.. Good luck

[Rusty]

My Mum's partner's son in law had a Type R Civic that seized after he pulle dove rand called the AA/RAC (I forget which). The Partolman told him to start it and rev it, it then seized due to lack of oil amongst other things. REplacement engine was a small fortune from Honda, he successfully claimed for a decent percentage of the cost.

[bluequattro]

They ve sent me a letter asking for details of my claim, so I imagine they think I have a chance.
Garage say they ll give a good invoice, that way I may get a bigger % of what they charge.
Father in law is aa patrol (glad it wasn t him that came out|)
He says they do pay up sometimes but you have to be persistent.
Flaming car must be cursed, went to see how they were doing today and the replacement cylinder head is leaking oil after they fitted it all up, so its gone to the engineering firm to get sorted out.
If audi had done a 4x4 that big years ago I d be driving one now, has put me off LR products butI can t find anything else i like that i can afford (Land Cruiser 4.2 would be nice)!

[audinut]

you have 0 chance! i have the same problem ! they came out to my 80 tdi as the fuel pump was leaking and decided to strip it at the side of the road (i wasnt there) the car was running and driveable before the aa arrived ... when he left it was a non runner! i have spent probably upwards of 5-6 hours on the phone arguing the toss with them .. i say the patrol man broke it - there response is "the pump needed a repair before we arrived at the scene therefore we will not pay as the original fault was already present"

im possibly thinking about court as they clearly broke it - but at the end of the day is it worth the stress !

[fish]

one thing i dont really understand is why bother with the AA in the first place?? If my car brakes down somewhere, i would phone a mate get him to come tow/trailer me home and fix it myself or leave it at a garage i know, wouldnt ever dream of haveing some random fool come out and "guess" what the problem is. I can understand both your situations as you allready have the problem now.