Best insurance/breakdown cover for hols in France?

[paul_374300602]

We're going to france for a couple of weeks in July/August, towing the van with 2 adults and 3 teenagers.

We feel we should have some breakdown cover and possibly personal cover as well. the caravan one seems very expensive and the options don't seem to match our requirements. The AA are very comprehensive in the vehicle/caravan cover but don't cover the people inside. Any suggestions or reccomendations would be helpful.

Cheers,

Paul

 

[David.O]

paul

All insurance cover is expensive especially if you do not need to use it, but should you need to call upon your supplier you will find you want the best. I have for many years taken out the CC red pennant cover, expensive yes have I needed to call upon their services no, but I can sleep well knowing if anything goes wrong and I am many miles from home there is some to help just a call away. Its called peace of mind and thats what holidays are all about

David

 

[Chrissylizzie]

Hi Paul

Insurance does seem expensive when booking a holiday, but we have recently done 2,700 miles in France and Italy. When in Italy, our car developed a fault and you suddenly feel a very long way from home. The car didn't get worse, but we had the knowledge that if it did, we would at least get ourselves, together with car and caravan home with Red Pennant Insurance from the Caravan Club.

 

[Angela_5076436]

One thing to beware of though - a robbery involving theft of your caravan and car keys [ yes and the spare set] according to our Insurance was not break down or anything they would cover - they would send out someone to break into the car for us .

Well now really what use was that - we would still have had no keys.

We are still trying to come up with a foolproof system of stashing spare keys somewhere.

 

[cooky1]

We take out Red Pennant Insurance from the Caravan Club each year for our trip abroad. Oue car broke down in France a couple of years ago and they were excellent. They arranged for the car to be picked up from the campsite and repaired. Even when I queried the bill they sorted everything out with the garage owner so we could collect our car and continue our holiday. It is only when you actually use a breakdown service that you appreciate what you pay for.

Graeme.

 

[JoannaLesley]

I just had to add to this. We had a breakdown on the A26 at Reims Champagne on Saturday - just as France closed down for the weekend. Once off the motorway, the Red Pennant people were ace. They had our van towed to a campsite and arranged for our car to be taken to a garage when France re-opened on Monday. When, by Tuesday, it was apparent that there was something seriously amiss, they arranged for a car to be brought out from the UK and ours picked up. That happened by Tuesday evening.

The hardest part was dealing with Eurotunnel. We had, by then, missed our slot as we were supposed to travel on Sunday am and they refused to honour our booking in any way or to make concessions. We had to buy a new crossing at

 

[Angela_5076436]

Jo - can you let us know how you finally had everything settled please.

I'm really interested in seeing if your Eurotunnel problem was covered .

Hope the car's warranty covers the car

 

[JoannaLesley]

Just an update Angela - thank you for your interest!

Our car was brought back to our local garage (main dealer for another make, but where we bought it second hand last September)on Monday 2nd. They quickly identified a problem with a seal, but have had the car ever since trying to odentify what made the seal blow out in the first place. We finally got it back yesterday, but they couldn't identify a fault. We'll have to see how it goes. Turns out that it isn't covered by the warranty, neither is the work we had done in France! However, dealer was good enough not to charge us for the work they have done.

Now we know the outcome, we will see what we can claim from Red pennant. I'll let you know about that one!

Jo

 

[JoannaLesley]

Hi Angela,

I thought I'd just tell you that we received a cheque this weekend for everything we claimed for! That included labour and parts for the first breakdown, additional campsite fees for our enforced stopover and full reimbursement of the cost of the Eurotunnel crossing to get back. No problems, no arguements. I'll definitely buy Red Pennant again.

Only drawback was that they sent the cheque to my husband and he doesn't have an active bank account - they've promised to replace it.....

In addition to all that, none of the work was covered by warranty (why am I not surprised), but our garage - Steels of Hereford - covered the cost of repairing the car anyway. They also spent quite a lot of time trying to get to the bottom of the problem and lent us a car while they did so.

Jo

 

[mcghee]

I only use the red pennant cover since a lot of recovery companies will only recover 'vans upto 18 ft. Red pennant will recover any size 'van.