Complaint letter to the RAC… I would like to complain about the dreadful service I received earlier this week. After standing outside for a few days over the cold weather my car refused to start when I attempted to return home. As the temperature was below freezing it soon flattened the battery (which is essentially in very good condition). I had no alternative but to phone for assistance from you, a service I have paid for for around 40 years and rarely use. My call was placed with you around 12:15 on Monday 4th December and was informed that I could expect someone to attend between 15:00 and 17:00. This would have been a lengthy wait and outside of the 60 minutes your website claims “We get to most breakdowns in 60 mins or less”. However your recorded, and I now suspect standard. message told me you were unusually busy. As the afternoon progressed the expected time gradually increased every time I refreshed the app. This leads me to think that such estimates were in no way relating calls to resources and I was not in fact included in any plan for service. You will recall that Monday was particularly cold and it was constantly raining. also bearing in mind that your advice is to stand by the roadside away from the car I was in danger of hyperthermia. Even sat in the car it was extremely cold. By late afternoon when it had gone dark and the expected attendance time had moved to 6.56pm to 8.56pm (I wiould like to know why your system claims to be able to estimate to exact minutes but still has a range of 2 hours) I called my wife to come in her car to provide somewhere warm and dry to shelter. She drove the nearly 40 miles and continued to stay with me awaiting your imminent arrival. The ETA still crept up eventually reaching between 11:30pm and 01:30 at which time I abamdined hope and prepared to leave but just as we were setting off I received a call from your engineer to say he was 15 minutes away. He eventually arrived around 9:00pm. After spending some time with the car he decided he was unable to help and we would need recovery. Due to the excessive wait I had already suffered he advised that we could arrange a convenient time the following day and we would be contacted to arrange this. I returned home leaving the car at the side of the road. Overnight no text was received but the app said that my car would be collected between 08:00 and 12:00 so still just a wild guess but nevertheless I got my wife to help get me to the car and resume my wait. As I am familiar with car mechanics to some extent I suspected that the problem may lie with the cold damaging the ignition coil for which I had a spare. I took this with me and fitted it whereupon I managed to start the engine. I saw no prospect of anything being promised by the RAC actually materialising so made my way home. Out of interest I did not cancel the incident until 16:00 by which time the app was telling me that you had identified the resource necessary to help but now offered no ETA at all. When cancelling the call I expressed my disappointment with the service and said I wnted to complain. I was given two choices, email or speak to the complaints department, I chose the latter. I was put through to another recorded message telling me how important you felt my call was but still failed to answer it. I waited listening to the recordings for some 15 minutes before geing given aniother message saying this service was no longer available and the call terminated. I have only recently renewed my policy with you but now feel that even the full refund of this would be little compensation for the 27 hours you left me abandoned and had it not been for my wife helping I might still be there. There response £60 compensation.