I worked for AAA emergency road service for 10 years so will share a bit here. Fair warning, I left AAA 20 years ago so I'm not certain how much of this is still applicable today. Take it with a grain of salt.
I think so. We use the discounts in hotels up and down east coast when necessary.
Main benefit though and where it paid for itself for a decade was when my car battery broke in Montreal. AAA works with a Canadian version of same and getting a new battery and install in the parking lot of Olympic Stadium took an hour and I can't remember it costing me that much at all in fees for being in Canada.
The battery service is outstanding but is not available in all areas. So it's a great selling point for the sales guys, but when I was there we had to turn down a ton of requests for this service because people were calling from areas where it was not available. If it's the same as before, they actually keep a good inventory of different battery sizes (but all by 1 or 2 brands) and this is how they can bring out a battery at night or holidays when you'd otherwise be hard-pressed to get one. IIRC the battery prices are pretty much the standard prices for whatever batteries they have, no discount and no unreasonable markup. Also in some areas the battery service ONLY does battery service calls. They have special vans for this and if they come out and determine a battery won't fix your problem, you have to wait for a tow truck (but the tow would be prioritized over people who called after you placed your initial call).
Triple A is a non-profit, however they do have overhead and the benefits you get from triple A would be better spent elsewhere unless you have a beater of a vehicle that needs multiple tows per year.
Not quite. AAA is a not-for-profit organization. Similar, but this is different than a non-profit.
I think so. We use the discounts in hotels up and down east coast when necessary.
Main benefit though and where it paid for itself for a decade was when my car battery broke in Montreal. AAA works with a Canadian version of same and getting a new battery and install in the parking lot of Olympic Stadium took an hour and I can't remember it costing me that much at all in fees for being in Canada.
Pretty sure you could call up a tow truck and have them deliver a battery for under a thousand dollars? Not sure how spending a hundred dollars a year pays for itself here.
Back in my day, no. Tow truck drivers would want to tow the car to some place where you could buy a battery. They would not want to lose valuable time going to a store, getting a battery for you, or installing it for you. They usually prefer to either a.) fit as many short, quick tows into a shift as possible or b.) hit the lottery with that occasional 100 mile tow since AAA pays per mile. AAA's battery service that Yankee mentioned was most likely a AAA-owned service, unavailable to non-members.
We have it at a cheaper rate but to me I would pay a hundo. Wife had to use the complimentary Volvo roadside assistance one time and the wait time quoted was 3-4 hours
At one point AAA was actually handling roadside assistance for many OEMs. I don't know or recall if AAA handled Volvo but multiple OEMs (and insurance companies, iirc) had direct interfaces so someone like BMW or GM (OnStar) would take your info and that info would show up in AAA's dispatch system just like requests from AAA members. One thing I hated was that AAA actually prioritized service to some of those OEMs over service to their own AAA members.
Even then your insurance company is making money on that roadside assistance. Unless you have a really old vehicle it is just cheapest to pay out of pocket the rare time you need it
You have access to significantly more honest tow truck companies than I have come across.
I am not sure how you would quantify this, google is full of horror stories related to triple A towing but I cannot find a report that shows whether they have better or worse service. I am sure you can find horror stories from calling the tow truck directly as well.
I did need a tow 2 years ago in the middle of nowhere colorado when a jeep ran me off the road due to it going to fast around a corner in snowy conditions. I did not have AAA but was able to get a tow relatively quickly at a reasonable rate.
From my understanding AAA pays the tow tuck drivers less than you would pay out of pocket and the service could potentially be slower if the tow trucks have other business.
This was definitely true when I worked there. By offering a pretty accurate guarantee of X calls per year, AAA can entice tow companies to do the service for a lower rate because they get a higher and more consistent volume without having to spend time/money on marketing and without competition for the work. It can be a good deal for them if they manage it correctly. Larger tow companies with more trucks typically manage this better than small one-man-band outfits with two guys with a truck who never owned a business before. When I left, I think AAA was paying $12.50 per tow in Atlanta (plus $2.50 per mile after 5 miles) in Atlanta, about $17 per locksmith call (keys locked in car), and about $9 to companies that only perform light services with smaller trucks ( battery charge, flat tire, etc.).
I have seen poorly run outfits fail to properly plan for the costs of maintaining & repairing the trucks and get into money trouble. That's when they really start getting scammy with people who call them directly (roadside negotiation) and also start de-prioritizing contracts that pay less (whether that's AAA or Travelers or whatever).
There's three dozen ways to get roadside assistance without AAA. Insurance, a good credit card, warranty.
If it's the only reason you use AAA, probably not.
Maybe. I can't say if AAA still does this but they did used to offer to reimburse you if AAA could not get service out quickly and you were able to get service privately. At that time most other orgs weren't doing that. No idea nowadays. And the likelihood of AAA being unable to get service quickly really varied by location. Southern Georgia was almost impossible, but AAA averaged under 30 min. in many (mostly urban) areas.
One other thing, also especially in larger cities, is that AAA actually owned fleets of tow trucks & light service vehicles and employed the drivers directly. Those assets were unavailable to the general public
and to other road service orgs (unless they contracted AAA for their roadside assistance, as mentioned above).
--HORROR STORIES--
I won't get into the bad customer experiences, as I was the one they complained to so it was daily. Handling 2000 roadside calls per day, complaints were about a dozen per day which is not bad, but when something went bad it often went really, really bad. My horror stories are from the other side. One of my favorite drivers - a Nigerian guy with an awesome accent, a winning smile, and tribal scars on his face - got hit on the side of I-85 while changing a tire. The customer actually got in the tow truck and got on the AAA radio to tell us to call 911. That was a bad day. He survived but was never the same. In another incident a driver I knew pretty well failed to properly secure a vehicle to his flatbed and it came off on the road, seriously injuring some motorists behind him.
Last thing I'll touch on is "is it worth it". Probably not, but I still have AAA. If you need roadside assistance having something set up in advance (whether that's AAA or otherwise) just simplifies things and removes a bit of the stress from a bad situation. Plus my wife and kid would otherwise have no idea where to start if they had a problem.
AAA is is better though. I think worth it.
