They sound like the answer to all your nightmares while driving. Normally, your car works fine, but consider the case when suddenly your car stops in the middle of the journey, leaving you totally helpless. This could be because of a puncture, could be because some other vehicle hit your car, or could be some other problem that is not yet diagnosed (at least, you don’t have the capabilities of a motor mechanic that you can quickly diagnose the problem). Now, you are stuck in the middle of nowhere, and you may not be able to figure out what is wrong with a car; you may not be even in a position that you can change the wheel of the car yourself. In such cases, there are now a number of car distress helplines that promise to help you quickly. Some of these (atleast in the Delhi / NCR region) are FastTrack, Race, Cross-Roads; and before you think that this is an advertising blog for them, this post is to point out a few problems in their functioning.
I have tried out a few of them, and performance has dipped badly in the last few years. Their promise is that they will be there within 30 minutes of filing a complaint; now the most common scenario is that of female family members and friends; if they get a puncture, it is not feasible for some of them to do the actual changing of the tyre. Further, you don’t know where it can happen, and if you have a service where you can get a tire replaced within 30 minutes, that is great.
Now, that was the promise. Unfortunately, the promise is not getting fulfilled. With 2 of these vendors (Race and CrossRoads), I have had a bad experience. In both case, there was a puncture, and a lady was waiting after calling them. They promised 30 minutes, but even 1 hour later, no trace. You call them again, and they were getting rude (Ma’am, they are coming, you need to wait). Finally, after 1.5 hours, we managed to make some local arrangements (the good part was that this happened at a place where it was crowded, so there was no safety issue). However, this is bad customer service - promising something that involved safety and convenience, and then not delivering. I will be very hesitant the next time they ask me for money for this service.
I wonder what the experience of other people with such kind of services has been like ?