THE TRUTH ABOUT RV ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE (AAA, Good Sam, etc.)

hey guys we are Sean and Christie this is long long honeymoon and today we are telling you the truth about RV roadside assistance whether it's necessary and what we have what we have has changed over the years we've been doing this for a little over 12 years now so we've had some experience with different companies and we'll share that with you here today I don't know any better way to address this topic than simply to recount all of our personal experiences dealing with these different companies tell you what happens and then you can make your own decision about who to go with or whether you even need RV roadside assistance my answer to that personally would be absolutely yes and it's not necessarily just for when you have a flat tire because I know a lot of you guys out there will say well I can judge my own flat tire I don't anybody to help me with that the one reason I would say you do need roadside assistance is if you were to break down and have to have your rig towed one toe trip will probably pay for I don't know five or six years have roadside assistance just because tow trucks are very expensive and depending on where you're broken down your tow can be a thousand dollars if they're having to tow you a hundred miles and if you're somewhere in the Yukon Territory or Alaska or out in the middle of South Dakota somewhere you might get a tow bill like that so that cost to join a roadside assistance program very easily will pay for itself in a situation like that ya know for some of you guys there's a bit of a macho thing going on here every time we post a video that shows someone else changing a tire on our rig besides me somebody asks can't you change a tire yes I've changed many tires in my life I've changed enough tires to know that if it's a hundred degrees outside and the asphalt is 120 degrees and we're broken down on an interstate I'm willing to let a professional change the tire my masculinity and man card are intact I'm not worried about that I think that changing a tire on the side of the interstate is incredibly dangerous and I personally don't want him changing a tire on the side of the interstate I will happily let whoever the roadside assistance company calls come and do it they've got a truck with big flashing lights to let people know hey we're working on this camper and they can crawl under there I don't want him to be the one under there so that's just my personal opinion everybody else has their own and that's totally fine now if you are insistent on changing your own tire or even if you're not we highly recommend that you carry a trailer ramp if you have a twin axle trailer because this makes tire changes much easier on a twin axle trailer you can just pull your trailer up on the ramp it lifts the bad tire off the ground makes it super easy to do a tire change yeah and especially like with our Airstream it has a very specific point that you're supposed to jack it up on and sometimes explaining that to somebody that's coming to change your tire they don't really take you seriously or they just sort of look at you and go yeah whatever and then they put it where they want it and sometimes that can do really bad things to your Airstream I know that may not be the case with all travel trailers but with Airstream it is the case now you air streamers out there you have rubber torsion axles and if someone jacks up your trailer using those axles they could potentially damage your axle that's an expensive fix yes you guessed it there will be a link beneath this video it's just some trailer ramps now with that said we're gonna tell you some stories it's story time kids we're going to tell you about our experience dealing with different companies and roadside assistance when we first set sail with long long honeymoon we bought triple-a roadside assistance before ever getting out on the highway and we traveled with our Airstream all across North America until we had our first flat tire guess where we had our first flat tire those of you who've been paying attention know it was in Meijer flat California more evidence that we're living in a simulation by the way so he called triple-a thinking no big deal it's a flat tire and triple-a said oh is the flat tire on your truck and we said no it's on our trailer and they were like oh sorry you don't have triple-a Plus which is what you have to have for your camper and I was like what can I upgrade to that or what is that you know and they're like well you have to have your triple a membership for a year before you can upgrade to triple-a plus now I don't think this is the case anymore but this was the case in 2007 so basically we were stuck Triple A said sorry you don't have the right plan you're on your own so our first experience with RV roadside assistance I was highly annoyed because we had paid for triple-a but it did not cover our travel trailers so you need to really pay attention when you sign up for one of these plans our next interaction with RV roadside assistance came with Good Sam roadside assistance yeah we switched to Good Sam roadside assistance we set out on another long run honeymoon adventure Criss crossing the country and we experienced our first proper tire blowouts just outside of Phoenix Arizona and got to use our Good Sam roadside assistance we called Good Sam because we were in a pretty dangerous situation not really far off the interstate highway yeah and we were pretty far from the next exit so we didn't want to just hobble along the edge of the road because traffic was moving I would say at least 75 miles an hour maybe 80 miles an hour yeah this is a good example of when you may not want to be out there changing a tire thankfully our blowout was on the passenger side of the vehicle but if it had been on the driver side of the vehicle it would have been right next to the interstate and I'm gonna point out to some of you guys with twin axle trailers if you don't have a terrible blowout you can actually run down the highway with a flat tire for a short distance at a reasonable rate of speed and you could even safely get to the next exit I'm just saying if you have a slight flat that it's not a flapping blowout that's gonna tear up your trailer you might be able to sort of limp along to the next exit safely because you've got a twin axle trailer and those other three tires will be supporting the weight of your trailer in this case it was a true blowout it was doing some damage we yeah do damage so good Sam sent out a tire professional yeah it was easy breezy we made the call somebody was there I think within like 30 or 40 minutes and we were back on the road 20 minutes later a couple of years passed we were setting sail this time bound for Alaska crossing through Nebraska on a very very hot summer day and we suffered another tire blowouts yes this is when we were running those wonderful Goodyear marathon tires we've told you all about and we called Good Sam sure enough they sent a tire professional out changed the tire we went along our merry way everything's great right so it was an AZ call they sent somebody out really fast did the job got us back on the road easy breezy no problems so you'd think we're just thrilled and pleased as punch with Good Sam roadside assistance right and so far we were not so fast my friend on the same journey and that may be significant a few months later we're coming back down from Alaska and we had a problem with our truck this was before our truck Seymour had been bullet proved by bulletproof diesel when we had the original EGR cooler in our truck our truck broke down because of that faulty part and we needed a tow so we needed not only a tow for our truck but off obviously also for our trailer but no worries right because we had good Sam roadside assistance well we called Good Sam roadside assistance and this happened in Napa California we weren't exactly in Yukon Territory we were in Napa we were right in town thank goodness we were on a little side street so we weren't in a dangerous spot we called Good Sam ruts RV roadside assistance and we requested a tow and they basically said no well I spent about an hour and a half on the phone with them while the gentleman at Good Sam made calls trying to find a tow truck and he kept coming back to me saying I can't find a company willing to come out so an hour and a half into this of me being on the phone with him he finally comes back and says well we're just not having any luck we'll try again tomorrow and I said excuse me and he was like yeah we can we can try again in the morning and I said well I'm broken down on the side of the road right now and tomorrow morning is unacceptable and he was just like well that's all I can do and I said I'm gonna take care of this problem myself and then I'm gonna make sure good Sam hears about it I'll just go ahead and tell you I'm gonna have this problem resolved myself like in a couple of hours so I'm not gonna rely on good Sam to do it for me tomorrow what I want to do is I want to talk to a customer service person just to let them know that this is not an acceptable thing you know it's not acceptable to leave people stranded overnight somewhere that's just that's just not acceptable when you're a roadside assistance company this is why people pay for it so it's nothing personal against you I know you've totally called everybody you can call I'm saying it's the overall nationwide good sound problem it's 3:00 in the afternoon it's not like it's midnight and we're in the middle of nowhere I mean you know we're we're 40 minutes outside of San Francisco one of the biggest cities in the country you know it's just kind of crazy that the good Sam does not have something in place to remedy situations like this because I'm sure we're not the first people that have experienced this so we hang up the phone I call the first tow truck company that I can find on line call them and they're like oh yeah we can come out it'll be $85 because they were literally towing us a mile down the street yeah they were telling our girl we were less a mile from the Ford dealership so I said great they sent somebody they were there within an hour so at that point I'm really mad because it's like why did Good Sam drop the ball I had no problem finding somebody to come out they come they tow her truck away I want to make this clear that you understand what happened here yeah we had a catastrophic failure in our truck we needed a tow we had paid Good Sam RV roadside assistance for this service and they declined they basically opted out and said we can't find someone who's willing to go tow you guys we found someone immediately so I can only speculate about what was going on here I and this is why I referenced our breakdown and blown tire earlier in the season that maybe since we had already made a claim in that season that they had ratcheted down what they were willing to pay for a tow I don't know that that's the case but I couldn't figure out why this happened maybe there's a cap on what they're willing to pay a tire professional or tow company or what have you so they're just throwing out lowball offers to these companies and then they say oh we couldn't find anyone to come out and help you we have all this documented on video and so if anybody doubts that the story is true we could show you in great detail in the contents the entire conversation yeah if you don't like to say that you had a bad experience with somebody but we have to be honest and tell you what we experienced and this was our experience you know with Good Sam in this particular situation this was not dropping the ball this was picking up the ball and running in the opposite direction towards the opponent's end zone you know this is worse than a fumble yeah because what if we'd been in a dangerous situation yeah exactly what if what if we had been needed meaning critical help you know if what if we were somewhere where we had hardly any cell service and I was just relying on this guy to make the call for me because I could make numerous calls I'm sure the good sound representative on the phone was simply following his directive from his management is never rude or anything like that he was just doing I'm sure what the company told him to do but it was unacceptable service I'm a nice person because if I wasn't I'd be yelling and screaming and having that complete come apart on the phone yeah not that would accomplish anything but it probably might go better it's really unacceptable when you've paid for a service and then they just flat-out denied to honor it I don't understand that maybe somebody can explain why that happened I'd love to hear it now we'll point out that later we wrote a letter to Good Sam roadside assistance requesting reimbursement for the cost of our tow which I think it was 85 bucks or something and the guy on the phone told me he was like well if you find somebody he was like you can submit your receipt and he was like they'll approve it or deny it and possibly reimburse you yeah he said they would consider reimbursing us to their credit they did eventually reimburse us that cost it took about six months and of course had to fill out the paperwork Shawn wrote the email letter to go along with the paperwork and submitted the receipt etc so it was a bit of a pain in the butt but we did get our money back but you know we never should have had to write that letter they should have sent out someone to give us the tow that we had already paid for because you're basically when you buy this roadside assistance you're buying a form of insurance right which brings us I suppose to the current day what do we have now do we have triple-a or do we have good Sam the answer is actually after that Good Sam incident when we came home got our reimbursement a few months later when that policy expired I did not renew it and we actually went back to triple-a and got Triple A plus because at that point you could just go ahead and sign up for the RV coverage day one we had that for maybe a year and never needed to use it and then we changed our car insurance to State Farm and with our State Farm Insurance it has a roadside assistance program so it covers our truck those insured with State Farm as well as our camper that is insured with State Farm so that's something that you all should check into if you have obviously an existing vehicle insurance policy on your tow vehicle it may cover your RV or maybe for a modest additional fee you could have it cover your RV probably you should call your insurance agent and ask for those details and find out you know does it have an unlock service if you get locked out of your RV well they come out and unlock the doors for you you don't think it'll happen to you but it's happened to almost everyone at least once the other thing that's included sometimes depending on your policy is if you run out of gas they'll bring you you know five gallons of gas or diesel whatever you need to wherever you are and that can also be covered in your policy I will also point out if you've been paying attention out there you know we changed the tires on our trailer we've always least in the last decade run Michelin tires on our truck now run Michelin tires on our trailer they're the LT tire you haven't watched that video check out the video in our channel that discusses those tires in detail our peace of mind went way up after getting those tires and I think our odds of contacting roadside assistance went way down because our tires don't explode every 100 miles anymore think that number four nation just ran out just died holy cow can you even get us off the road holy cow unbelievable I'm just gonna have to like go over amazing truly amazing see more goddess to the station thank you Jesus if you travel far enough often enough eventually you're gonna find yourself in a pickle there's going to be a one way or another you're gonna have a breakdown you're gonna have a flat tire you're gonna lock yourself out you're gonna run out of gas something eventually will happen if you spend enough time on the road right now we're going with our vehicle insurance that also covers RV that's the roadside assistance that we are currently using and I can't tell you an experience thus far with the State Farm roadside assistance because since we've had it we haven't had to call them so take that for what you will this is an opportunity for some of you experienced RV travelers to chime in you have triple-a you have Good Sam do you have something else do you have nothing let us know and let us know your own experience and what's been working for you I think it can really vary from person to person I think some people are gonna have one coverage and they're always gonna have a great experience and somebody else you know might have the experience like we did where we made a call one time and the experience was terrible yeah I'm baffled by the entire episode in Napa California with Good Sam roadside assistance that is something that really shocked me into this day it makes it very difficult for me to recommend that service knowing that there is a chance they're gonna say sorry you're out of luck we'll try again tomorrow because that's exactly what they said to us now you know maybe they've changed policy since then I hope Savage I certainly hope so all right guys thank you once again for tuning in to Lowell oh ho also known as long-long honeymoon if you liked this video please give it a thumbs up leave us a comment down below share it with your friends and family and until next time what do we say we say low low low low low HOH nation Danner boots Mountain Lite hiking boots against the traditional Dutch wooden clog the Danner boot is constructed of an all leather upper that's made by hand of one piece of leather the wooden clog is made by hand also one piece of wood so we're gonna call this one a tie Danner boots get the job done and they will last for years wooden clogs also get the job done and have kept termite free they also will last for years Plus wooden clogs are buoyant they will float in water and in a pinch you can use them as firewood advantage wooden clogs Danner boots are a little bit heavy and bulky but once you break em in they are very supportive and comfortable over the long term wooden clogs not so much they feel kind of like wearing a large log on your foot plus you run the risk of splinters Danner style is truly classic you can wear these boots just about anywhere wooden clog also truly classic but you look kind of like a large elf whenever you wear these things I'm not sure really what these are good for

Channel: Long Long Honeymoon

Views: 242,337

Rating: 4.9472914 out of 5

Keywords: airstream, rv, camping, travel, loloho, rv living, loloho camping, roadside assistance, good sam club, good sam roadside, recreational vehicle (industry), good sam trailer, roadside assistance tools, roadside assistance app, roadside assistance lights, roadside assistance truck, roadside assistance vehicle, roadside assistance job, good sam roadside assistance review, good sam roadside review, good sam roadside assistance

Id: knZy4ouICCQ

Length: 21min 19sec (1279 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 14 2019