VW roadside assist not actaully VW roadside assist.??

[woofy]

In a surprise twist our Skoda has just come out of the free period so went straight into coverage by RACV that we have for our out of warranty cars. I bought a Hyundai Santa Fe, and was the twist was that they come with not only genuine RACV/RAVC?NRMA etc coverage, but the premium coverage. They don't even tout it, it just is something you find out. And its covered free as long as you use their service centres for years.

[BrianS]

This is a problem for VW to fix.

The service is branded as a VW product, and sold to you as a VW product. You do not have a contract with Mondial Assist, you have a contract with VW Assist, and it through them that all your complaints should be directed.

I totally understand how outsourcing works - but when the end product is sold as brand XYZ, it's their responsibility to deal with the customers in all situations, good and bad.

The same goes for airline code sharing. I had a Qantas flight booked from Rome to Sydney via Hong Kong, but the flight was operated by Cathay Pacific. I had troubles on the flight (severely broken seat ended up putting my back out), Qantas tried to absolve themselves of the problem by blaming Cathay Pacific, but in the end, my contract was with Qantas, the the problem was theirs to deal with where I was concerned.

Code share is the biggest pile of s**t ever, had a big problem travelling back from the uk last year with virgin and their apparent code share with virgin Australia, booked and paid for extra baggage but they almost wanted to charge me 4 times over for the domestic flight even though it was all booked with virgin, took the shine off the holiday I will admit

[woofy]

We had that issue at Christmas, booked a QANTAS flight from melb to Brisbane and when the time came, it changed to a Jetstar flight te week before. My wife was traveling with our 3 yr old and our 10 mth old. Jetstar count every item in your hands now and allow 2, babies get nothing. So with the nappy bag and her handbag and my daughters bag of toys etc for the flight she had to check in her only tiny carrying bag full of breakable presents we were bringing up. No ifs nor buts. Better still her checked in bag with other presents suddenly was overweight, but well under the QANTAS allowance. We were really pissed....no meals either, so we didn't get anything we paid or and may as well have booked the Jetstar flight and saved the difference....theiving bastards.

[Keep On Rocc'in]

Do not cancel your NRMA membership or you lose your time accrued and status and go back to a newbie if you decide to rejoin. However what you can do, should you choose to use the VW roadside, is hibernate your NRMA membership. You still pay a reduced fee but can fully reactivate at any time. My current car when bought came with 12 months free roadside so I used that and hibernated NRMA for that period.