It is hard to promote why breakdown cover could be an important purchase in terms of saving you money time and stress. Well this is written when America votes for its next President, and election that is probably one of the most important in USA history based on the events of the last 8 years.

Lewis Hamilton has won the F1 world championship, bringing some pride back to the UK; the place motor racing was born and has some amazing talent. Even Ferrari relies on chief engineers from the UK, to compete with Maclaren.

But probably the main reason for a reduced demand for breakdown cover is the worldwide financial crisis with banks around the world needing bailing out from Governments and tax payer’s money.

Christmas is around the corner and families are more concerned about finding money
to buy presents for the kids, than that breakdown cover policy for the car. These are trying times with uncertainty all around.

Breakdown cover net will be visiting the USA very soon, and will be writing about how the USA are handing things. Will breakdown cover still be an important purchase for them after the election? Let’s wait and see.

Today mark a remarkable take over of many of the UK banks in order to bring calm to this financial worldwide crisis. What appears to a victim of these takeovers is the loss of top jobs in the banking sector. The RBS Boss Sir Fred Goodwin stepped down in rumour it was part of the conditions to inject billions of pounds of UK tax paying money into RBS, to save it from collapse.

RBS of course owns Green Flag Breakdown cover as well as many other insurance companies such as Direct Line and Privilege. In theory this may mean that when you ring your Green Flag breakdown Cover Emergency service, you are in fact calling a government owned organisation, or to be more exact you and me as tax payers.

We have yet to figure out if this rescue deal puts any other breakdown cover company under government control or not, until all the details of all banks and money used to buy shares becomes more available. It might be that when you pay your annual breakdown cover premium you are putting money back into the tax system, or hopefully at the very least, your purchase could increase the value of shares, so when those shares are sold, there is a profit to go back to the people of the UK.

I bet you never thought about that, the last time you bought breakdown cover. Let’s hope this brave decision gets the UK economy back on its feet and the confidence back into buying financial products ad services again.

Supermarkets are into everything nowadays and 3 of the largest names in shopping have associations with the big 3 breakdown cover companies. The largest supermarket has partnered with Green Flag to offer its customers and it looks like they are promoting it more than ever.

Spread across the local Tesco car park was a Tesco breakdown cover banner, something I hadn’t seen for any food products. Looking on their website you see a further promotion, get a £15 Tesco voucher if you buy breakdown cover through them, or Green Flag to be more exact. What I couldn’t compare was if when the form is filled in the price is the same as buying Green Flag breakdown cover direct.

There does seem to a conflict here though, because I am sure I regularly see the RAC selling breakdown cover in the foyer, with the man in the uniform and the desk, you know what I mean.
It does seem strange that Tesco would put so much effort into selling breakdown cover to the extent of putting up banners everywhere.

You can’t help thinking there would be more mileage in other products, especially with the competition there currently is within the market and the financial banks. It is one thing putting out some breakdown cover leaflets on the checkouts, but to offer £15 of vouchers and spend money to sell a service on behalf of someone else, does seem a bit overkill, but heh, who am I?

Well it has been another scary day on the stock market with most of not all financial institutions taking a huge hit on share value. One of the hardest hit was the RBS or Royal bank Of Scotland that owns both Direct Line and Green Flag Breakdown Cover brands.

It was reported that at one point the Green flag breakdown cover owner lost 39% of its share value today, which of course has many people very jittery.
The breakdown cover arm of its organisation is just a drop in the ocean compared to the other banks and insurance companies the Royal Bank Of Scotland owns, in fact it was reported today, the reason why many had not pulled their finds of their bank, is because they do not know that Royal Bank Of Scotland owns that particular bank.

Of course here, we are only interested in breakdown cover and there is no doubt that over the last month or so, sales form our site has dropped, even though traffic has remained steady. A decision by the Chancellor about our economy will be made tonight for tomorrow morning, and as many look to their savings and investments, we will be looking to see how the breakdown cover owner is doing for their cash flow and will it affect jobs or even the ownership of the Green Flag breakdown cover brand.

For the RAC and The AA you turn up at their site and within seconds you know how much your breakdown cover premium is likely to be with easy links to follow through to your chosen policy type, but it just is not that easy with Green Flag.

There are price prompts as you arrive on the homepage, which look pretty attractive, but at this point I doubt many would expect to fill in a form o at least 2 pages with all the criteria of your car, before you get the breakdown cover quote. Inevitably it ends up being more expensive that those prices on the homepage.

Because the car was nearly 10 years old, we have to presume this pushed the recovery premium up, to an annual cost just below what The AA was quoting without the form filling. You can’t help thinking that many who do not like filling in forms with personal information, may add false information about themselves, i.e.post code, and telephone number, just on case they did not like the final quote. After all, Green Flag now have that information which could be used for further unwanted communication.

We are not suggesting this would actually happen, but you have to ask the question of why they need you email address, home address, and other sensitive information if it plays no part in the final price that is quoted for your breakdown cover policy.
It would be a better procedure if you filled in the factors only that affected your breakdown cover premium quote and then if the potential customer agrees to go ahead; at that point they could continue with the form and add the personal information.

The truth is that as soon as the form filling procedure starts, there will be a section of the public that will click away, as for decades you would join your motoring club, for a set fee.

It says that modern recovery vehicles are less than 40 years old with other recovery vehicles being used before then. Modern clean equipment is the order of the day. There is a more serious side to this, a charity trying to raise money.

It is a promotional video of a charity aimed at helping those who work within the breakdown recovery business and maybe have suffered an injury or worse, working within this industry.

This is the first I have heard of this charity and it may be I will add more information, in their words rather than mine in this short period of time.

It asks for a donation at the end. We are doing our bit by showing the video first and maybe some more information in the future. It can be a dangerous job working in the breakdown recovery industry, by the roadside, anytime day or night.

I promised some footage of the 2007 tow show in the uk which is a show for recovery trucks in the UK. Here is an interview, talking about the requirements of the UK recovery vehicle market in 2007.

I am sure there are a few foriegn voices in the video, so the world tow show may be an apropriate title. Not for the avaerage individual, but if you are into tow truck or in the breakdown cover game, you may want to watch.

Believe it or not there is a show for recovery vehicles and it is called the tow this last one was in June 2007 in the UK. Of course it is not just aimed at the national breakdown cover organisations but for garages throughout the UK who as part of their service offer a recovery service.

You will se here an example of the recovery trucks that may have appeared at the tow show as this was the promo before hand. John Coldwell Chairem of REMSA whatever that means presents this short video.

There is a focus on working trucks, again what ever that means, but you can see a couple of examples of what was going to be there.

I will lokk for the actual show video.

A couple of days back, I decided to check the new rates for breakdown cover, as mine is about to expire soon. To my surprise, the search term breakdown cover came up with 100’s of names offering coverage in UK. But what actually had me interested was the number of websites offering a ‘comparison’ service. I was intrigued and decided to pursue this further. After browsing many of them, I now realise that they are good, but they left me very confused!

The comparison websites list all the major breakdown service providers, different levels or types of covers provided by them, and, of course, the cost for the type of car breakdown cover you are specifically looking for.

And your choice, based on the company and type of cover, will be the deciding factors regarding the quality of breakdown service you receive. (more…)

It was reported in the Mail on Sunday yesterday that the RBS insurance arm is being offerd for sale for around £8bn. The RBS or Royal Bank Of Scotland owns Direct Line insurance, Privilege, NIG and Green Flag Breakdown Cover.

It was reported that some suggest that RBS needs £7bn in the bank in reserves to meet solvency requirements. It was also quoted tha Direct line is not for sale, which would also suggest that Green Flag breakdown is also staying put.

RBS insurance is the second largest general insurer in the UK and the largest motor insurer and has other operations around Europe with an income of £5.7bn last year.

Amost on a weekly basis there seems to be insurance organisations changing hands as if to stay ahead of the rest.

To you and me it will mean no change and “Who cares?” , but clearly someone is making money out of these changes otherwise why bother. As long as the cars keep getting fixed by the roadside and the waiting times drop, that is all that matters to you and me.