The Competition
Working as a car engineer and operating breakdown recovery vehicles you may think that the national breakdown cover organisations are my competition I say this because I am often asked the question, especially when many of these companies offer roadside assistance policies for under £30.
The truth is that there are customers who will buy an annual policy but many more that choose not too, either because they don’t believe it will happen to them, or they just prefer to pay their bills as they happen.
The result is that most days and nights there are call outs, form stricken motorists who do not have the tools or experience to get that car working again, so we perform initially a roadside assistance call out, but then it may be we have to bring it back to the garage for other repairs.
There are few of us and that is where I see the real competition, does the customer ring my roadside assistance company or someone else’s and because it is an impulse decision or even under distress, stranded by the motorway, you just don’t know who they will contact.
Ironically many of these have deals with say the Green Flag breakdown company as an agent, so you may ring these guys as a call out and get a Green Flag vehicle attending, or often these guys get called out form the Green Flag of which they then charge their agreed fee. It is a bit like buses sometimes. You don’t see one for a while and then 2 come along together and I find myself ringing the competition, to do a call out on the second call. I do however arrange some commission for this.
Category: Roadside