BeMoto Titanium package

As this includes RAC UK & EU full bike recovery, has anybody had cause to use it?

If in the EU, you still have to call a UK phone number to get help.

If you have called for help, what is the follow up procedure?
Anything in the 'small print' that may be liable for refusal?

Thanks.

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Never had the need to use them for a major issue. Had a puncture (in England), called for assistance and the recovery service arrived within 45 mins, with the repair carried out in 15 mins.

The RAC package of assistance is just a bolt-on to the Motor policy ie. Something stuffed into the same envelope as your certificate of Motor insurance.

The RAC operate a perfectly competent breakdown service in the UK and, through local agents and network partners, abroad in Europe.

Is there any ‘small print’ that will affect you being helped should you breakdown? Read the cover that the RAC provides. Having read it, what do you think?

Do the RAC or other competent breakdown service providers give ‘better’ cover if you buy it separately? Lord knows, as you’ll have to do a comparison yourself.

Has anyone ever had a problem being rescued by the RAC or, for that matter, any other competent breakdown assistance company? No doubt yes. There again, some complainants maybe have problems getting assistance to tie their own shoe laces.


What is the procedure? Most of them work the same way:

A. You have a problem necessitating a call. For example, your vehicle has spat its coolant down a mountain pass.

B. You telephone the emergency number and speak to someone. That someone may not be English but they will speak almost perfect English. Why are they not always English? That’s easy. The RAC need to employ the services of local language speakers, so they can assist you to find someone to help you in a Slovakian dialect, Finnish or Portuguese. It would be stupid if they only employed English only speakers from Hull or Penzance.

C. You explain your problem to them.

D. They set the wheels in motion to assist you, as detailed in the booklet you received.

E. The process of stage D is not instantaneous. Why? You are not the only person to have called that minute, or called in the last hour, in the last 24 hours, that’s why. Patience is your friend. If you get very bored, you can always start wishing you’d never been ripped-off and start pushing your vehicle instead.

F. At some point a rescue bloke will appear. If you are in Italy, he’ll probably be Italian and he’ll likely to be French if you are in France. You can guess what he’ll likely be if you are in Spain, the UK or the Slovak Republic.

G. This fellow will likely be driving a car carrying vehicle. Why? That is because there are many more cars on the roads of Europe than there are motorbikes.

H. If the fellow can repair your breakdown then and there, great. Off you go.

I. If he can’t, they will probably take your vehicle to the nearest fully authorised dealership for your make of vehicle. Why do the ‘idiots’ probably not take you to the general garage you can see two hundred yards away? That is because a fully authorised dealership might well have the diagnostic tools / parts available to hand then and there.

J. Not every country has an authorised dealership on every corner of every village. This means your vehicle (and you) may need to be relayed some distance. This will take time. If you breakdown on a Saturday, most garages are shut on Sunday and many in Europe for at least half of Monday. This will further delay the process. If your breakdown also falls in some strange local holiday for the Feast of the Immaculate Virgin’s Sister-in-Law, that’s just tough luck. Comfort yourself that plenty of Europeans will moan if they breakdown in England on or about our unique August bank holiday.

K. Listen to what the RAC tell you. They will listen to sensible counter proposals BUT take care, if they enact your cunning plan, they are then under no automatic obligation to assist you further, should your oh-so-cunning plan fail.

L. If your vehicle cannot be repaired in a reasonable period, then (subject to tge terms of the cover) you will be offered alternative transport. This may well NOT be a motorcycle. Why? See G above. You can cry if you like or you can set about repairing your vehicle yourself or you can start pushing. The choices are yours.

M. You can now continue your holiday, as planned. What happens next might vary, depending on whether the vehicle is repaired, how they then propose to reconnect you to it and / or whether the vehicle is then repatriated back to your hometown. Again, listen to the options the RAC give you, refer to K above.

N. You may well have to pay hire costs, taxi fares etc etc then and there. Keep the receipts, to recover your expenses (subject to the terms as set out in the booklet) on your return.


It’ll be a huge comfort to know that I (and many thousands, maybe millions, of others) have called on help from assistance / recovery service companies at least three times in say 40 years of jaunting about in Europe. Each time it has worked really well, including the one time I did persuade them to listen to a sensible counter proposal, whereby I continued in the hire car around France, whilst my bike was recovered back to London for repair. This was better for me than having it repaired in France and then me having to backtrack back across France several days later to pick it up. I am not so precious about my motorbike, that I cannot stand not knowing where it is every second of every 24 hours.

PS When your broken down vehicle arrives at the authorised dealership, they may well do their best to assist you then and there. This though might not be possible, if they are already fully booked, dealing with customers with existing bookings. That is only fair. You can imagine your frustration, should your booked service here in the UK not be carried out on time, because they had downed tools to deal with some unknown French holiday maker’s pressing problems.

Beware the French lunch hour too. They WILL very probably close and they WON’T stay open for the next 60 minutes, even if you arrive at 11:55 for your’ “But it’s just a five minute job, mate”. They will though probably do their best to assist you at 13:01 when they reopen.

PPS Despite what you read on these pages, a breakdown (ie something failing on your vehicle) is NOT a crash in your vehicle or somebody maliciously damaging it. Crashes and malicious damage are covered by your standard comprehensive motor policy. Many breakdown covers specifically exclude causes such as these.

In the same way, your coolant pissing out on a mountain pass IS a breakdown and would NOT be covered by your standard comprehensive motor policy.

In other words, you probably need both in order to best prepare for any eventuality.

Bods often confuse the two, as they arrive in the same envelope. In short, read the documents you receive.

Wapping said:

Beware the French lunch hour too. They WILL very probably close and they WON’T stay open for the next 60 minutes, even if you arrive at 11:55 for your’ “But it’s just a five minute job, mate”. They will though probably do their best to assist you at 13:01 when they reopen.

Click to expand...

Off topic but this made me smile, a few years ago i worked for a truck manufacturer, we had a customer moving a satellite down to the south of France for onward shipping to the launch site. It had suffered technical delays and nothing could go wrong if it was going to make the launch, anyway we were briefed that if the truck had a problem everyone had to jump so workshops along the route as well as the french importer were told that it was coming and nothing could go wrong - or else.

You’ve guessed it, it had a problem and when the french workshop was called they said, ‘its almost lunchtime and we’ll get on it straight after’ - there was a couple of conversations right down the chain of command that resulted in 2 technicians leaving the workshop straight way.

Anyway the next calll was the customer who ‘went off like a bottle of pop’, apparently they had got to the truck in good time and promptly opened the back doors of the van, pulled out a picnic table and 2 chairs and sat and had their lunch - obviously the story goes that they had a gingham tablecloth and bottle of wine on the table but I’m sure that was just a bit of poetic licence.

At the time it was really serious and we though what a bunch of clowns but when the wheels were turning again we all wondered if their quality of life was better without all the pressure we allow to be transferred to us from on high…

The French lunchtime is sacrosanct and enshrined in law.

OP, to give you an idea….

I shredded the rear tyre on my 1600 in rural France. The bike model was a relatively new release, so tyres (which have to be homolgated in France / Germany) were hard to come by for such a big heavy bike. Rather than fart about I called the recovery company. They:

A. Did all the ringing around to source a back AND a front tyre. This took them all day, as they were found in Germany. In parallel, I had contacted a friend in the UK and, as a fall back, had arranged for him to go to my garage in London where I had two spare tyres. The rescue company agreed, if necessary, to pay have these sent across via DHL if two tyres could not be found locally.

B. Having found the tyres in Germany, the recovery company arranged for them to be sent by courier to BMW Motorrad in Dijon.

C. Whilst all this was going on, I and my stricken bike were picked up by a low loader. They dropped me off in a town about an hour from Dijon (we didn’t know then if the tyres would be found or where they might go) in an Ibis hotel which the rescue company booked and paid for. My bike we unloaded in the hotel car park.

D. The next day, it was confirmed that the tyres were in Dijon, the rescue company then sent another truck to the hotel, picked me and the bike up again and carted us both to BMW Motorrad, who were ready for us. The tyres were fitted. I paid for the tyres and the fitment and I was back on the road, with brand new tyres, by 14:30 and on my way to Calais.

All this involved minimal effort from myself. The rescue company did everything and were hugely flexible. It was a new bike, so the whole lot was done by BMW Assistance, working in conjunction with either Allianz or Axa, doing the work behind the scenes. Top class service.

PS This was when I learned that the tyres on the 1600…. which had done say, 2,000 miles when I left home for a trip of about 2,500 miles…. Only do 4,500 miles and that for the last 750 miles, the wear is exponentially fast. I was ‘only’ 300 miles from home but I was stuffed. I only made that mistake once!

Any thoughts on this OP or on your open question about post-Brexit Travel insurance?

https://www.ukgser.com/forums/showt...-45-days-Western-Europe?p=6252008#post6252008