Breakdown Cover to Support 8.5m Motorhome and small trailer in europe and more than 5k to get us home anyone?

[Potty]

There can't be many cases where they would ship the whole lot back to England surely?

I must admit, that was my assumption when I first bought a motorhome, but they will take you to a main dealer first for repairs?

If a, for arguments sake, Fiat dealer quoted £2.5k to fix a serious engine fault then surely there wouldn't be an option to have it shipped home for a greater (to the insurer) cost?

Can think of a few occasions when this could happen. For example, I don’t drive. If my husband was unable to drive, we would need to have ourselves and the van (and the dog!) repatriated.

 

[Al-Di]

we used RAC Arrivals december 2018 the only cost I had was due to the boat being cancelled at Bilboa and arranging recovery to Santander, which we got back when home,
We were recovered from Pau(France) to Bilboa
cost from Bilboa to santander was 485 euro,

7m van 3.4m high 4t,

no dealers wanted to know as over 10year old,

 

[PeteH]

My R-V` where insured for many years with NFU. (they no longer do Large M-H insurance, as the guy who bought my R-V found out!) Who likewise had an arrangement with RAC similar to "Arrival". They recovered a 32ft R-V and 15ft bed trailer from France, when I dropped a valve, on the big Chevy. The only place that could handle the repair was in the Midlands!. The recovery vehicle came from around Fareham nr Portsmouth?. CCC have arrival on my Current 7.4M Rapido?.

 

[Sunnyb]

Our van was repatriated through NW Flexplus last year (less than 7 m) and although I can’t provide any advice for the OP on whether they would have helped in this case, a couple of general points raised by other members above jump out. We also dealt with a call centre in Lyons which is operated by a company called Opteven and it is likely to be the same one mentioned above. From their website and our dealings with them it appears that they deal with European breakdowns for lots of different breakdown insurers. They also told us that there are a limited number of recovery firms that they deal with. They sub-contracted the recovery initially to another firm in the UK called (ironically) Ontime Automotive who them subcontracted it to a recovery firm called Pierce Recovery and Breakdown Services. We had no quibble over our claim from NW but we did have long delays with our van repatriation which ended up taking 9 weeks! Most of these delays were due to Opteven and Ontime Automotive and Pierce Recovery were really helpful and responsive. The only reason we went for repatriation was because it couldn’t be repaired in France before we were due to return home and we didn’t know it would take so long for the repatriation. However it did surprise us that neither Opteven nor our breakdown insurer (which is LV Britannia providing the service for Nationwide) seemed that interested in encouraging or incentivising us to reconsider having it repaired in France when they became aware of a backlog/difficulties in arranging the recovery. I don’t know how much it actually cost the insurer in the end but the recovery firm who eventually brought it back said that overall it would definitely be in the thousands and £5000 wouldn’t be unusual. As the repair only cost a couple of hundred pounds in the end this seems absolute madness on their part. We complained about the repatriation delay and received an amount of compensation for the poor service that covered the cost of the repair. Some more joined up thinking on their part could have saved them a fortune and us a lot of stress which was caused by the delay.

 

[zac]

Our van was repatriated through NW Flexplus last year (less than 7 m) and although I can’t provide any advice for the OP on whether they would have helped in this case, a couple of general points raised by other members above jump out. We also dealt with a call centre in Lyons which is operated by a company called Opteven and it is likely to be the same one mentioned above. From their website and our dealings with them it appears that they deal with European breakdowns for lots of different breakdown insurers. They also told us that there are a limited number of recovery firms that they deal with. They sub-contracted the recovery initially to another firm in the UK called (ironically) Ontime Automotive who them subcontracted it to a recovery firm called Pierce Recovery and Breakdown Services. We had no quibble over our claim from NW but we did have long delays with our van repatriation which ended up taking 9 weeks! Most of these delays were due to Opteven and Ontime Automotive and Pierce Recovery were really helpful and responsive. The only reason we went for repatriation was because it couldn’t be repaired in France before we were due to return home and we didn’t know it would take so long for the repatriation. However it did surprise us that neither Opteven nor our breakdown insurer (which is LV Britannia providing the service for Nationwide) seemed that interested in encouraging or incentivising us to reconsider having it repaired in France when they became aware of a backlog/difficulties in arranging the recovery. I don’t know how much it actually cost the insurer in the end but the recovery firm who eventually brought it back said that overall it would definitely be in the thousands and £5000 wouldn’t be unusual. As the repair only cost a couple of hundred pounds in the end this seems absolute madness on their part. We complained about the repatriation delay and received an amount of compensation for the poor service that covered the cost of the repair. Some more joined up thinking on their part could have saved them a fortune and us a lot of stress which was caused by the delay.

I have nationwide cover but can’t use them due to our Motorhome being 8.5m long and with a car trailer. Only ever used them once on a previous car but they wouldn’t take the gps coordinates and i didn’t know the name of the road. I had 2 blow outs where a sharp rock hit the front tyre on the passenger side then hit the bank and came back and hit the back tyre bursting both. In the end i called my wife to come and get me and i went and got the 2 spare wheels i usually keep for winter and swapped them myself. They were pretty useless on that occasion but i have heard some good reports from other members.
Red Pennant seems to match what i need from the camc so in future i will be going with them. I also asked them to quote for the actual Motorhome insurance as well and they were cheaper than comfort. Not by a lot but enough to ensure i will be switching when it next comes up for renewal.

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[Sunnyb]

Our van was repatriated through NW Flexplus last year (less than 7 m) and although I can’t provide any advice for the OP on whether they would have helped in this case, a couple of general points raised by other members above jump out. We also dealt with a call centre in Lyons which is operated by a company called Opteven and it is likely to be the same one mentioned above. From their website and our dealings with them it appears that they deal with European breakdowns for lots of different breakdown insurers. They also told us that there are a limited number of recovery firms that they deal with. They sub-contracted the recovery initially to another firm in the UK called (ironically) Ontime Automotive who them subcontracted it to a recovery firm called Pierce Recovery and Breakdown Services. We had no quibble over our claim from NW but we did have long delays with our van repatriation which ended up taking 9 weeks! Most of these delays were due to Opteven and Ontime Automotive and Pierce Recovery were really helpful and responsive. The only reason we went for repatriation was because it couldn’t be repaired in France before we were due to return home and we didn’t know it would take so long for the repatriation. However it did surprise us that neither Opteven nor our breakdown insurer (which is LV Britannia providing the service for Nationwide) seemed that interested in encouraging or incentivising us to reconsider having it repaired in France when they became aware of a backlog/difficulties in arranging the recovery. I don’t know how much it actually cost the insurer in the end but the recovery firm who eventually brought it back said that overall it would definitely be in the thousands and £5000 wouldn’t be unusual. As the repair only cost a couple of hundred pounds in the end this seems absolute madness on their part. We complained about the repatriation delay and received an amount of compensation for the poor service that covered the cost of the repair. Some more joined up thinking on their part could have saved them a fortune and us a lot of stress which was caused by the delay.

I should add that the poor service only related to the repatriation part - the actual recovery to the garage in France, putting us up in a hotel, organising taxis and hire cars to get us home as foot passengers was all handled very efficient and promptly. So we are sticking with NW but wouldn’t opt for repatriation if it ever happened again unless that was unavoidable.