AAA – Rv coverage or the lack there of!! (Sierra’s Road trip day 2 cont’d)

I was up by 7am the next day, (the 1st of November) so as to get my call in to AAA in a timely manner. My goal was to be at the repair shop by noon or 1pm and this seemed very manageable with the idea of over-estimating the time it would take for AAA to respond.

I have documented the timeline of my AAA calls and texts.

• 7:11 AM call #1 to AAA
• 7:28 AM text from AAA acknowledging receipt of my service request
• 8:06 AM call from Silver State Towing – (I looked the company up and they were 55 miles away from my location – so a 2 hour window of time for arrival wouldn’t be unrealistic). While I was still on the phone with Silver State Towing the gentleman I was speaking with said that the AAA dispatch had fallen off his screen so AAA would have to re-send it to him
• 8:31 I call AAA again – they don’t know what is going on and say they will call back
• 8:56 AM I call AAA again — while I was trying to speak with someone there I received a call from a different AAA
• 8:58 AM AAA – new call tells me that based on my current location I am covered by Southern CA AAA and not Northern CA AAA. I was not happy at this news. I had driven East from the San Francisco area and if you look at a map of my location it makes absolutely no sense why I would be routed to a Southern California AAA.
• 9:17 AM call from Southern CA AAA saying they have found a Tow Service that will help me and I should receive help in about 10 hours. Will I accept the time frame……….. I was in shock!! Of course I had to say I would accept the call because after all, it took AAA 2 hours to come up with any sort of a plan at all.
• 10:07 AM I receive a call from Pete Johnston’s Towing – They say they have been contracted by AAA to do my Tow and they needed the details. For the record Pete Johnston’s Towing is located just north of Morro Bay, California! Click this link to get an idea of just how far away they were located. I called their office later to verify that they don’t contract with other drivers or have an office closer to my location that they were going to dispatch from.

I asked the AAA representative if I were to find a tow service myself would they reimburse me for the tow? She said there was a good possibility they would, especially since my time estimate was so far out but she also said that it would be at the rate AAA decided to be fair and not necessarily for my cost.

My intention was to have the RV towed to a Truck & RV Service place I had found in my Google Search. the name of the place is Sierra Heavy Duty RV & Truck Repair. They have good reviews on Google and Yelp and based on my phone conversations with them I was truly impressed. Ron was the person I spoke with on the 1st of November. I had called him first thing in the morning to be sure he would accept my RV as a customer. I explained the situation and since it was a Friday he was very realistic with me that there may not be anything they could do without getting parts in. I wasn’t stressed and told him that I had no real travel plans so if I wound up staying in Sonora for the weekend or longer I would assume that this was my planned destination.

After AAA gave me the 10 hour wait time estimate I called Sierra back and in talking with Ron he actually managed to find a tow service in Sonora that would be willing to come and get me. In talking with the tow truck driver on the phone, (the tow company Ron had found) I actually realised just how far behind me Sonora was and the driver who drove the Sonora Pass everyday told me that the short distance in front of me on this road was nothing like what was behind me and if my brakes seemed to be operating normally now (which they did seem to be doing) then realistically I was probably just as well off to continue on my way. He had great things to say about Sierra Truck and RV and was very clear with me that he was in no way trying to dissuade me from going to them. I told him i would think about my options for a a couple of minutes and then call him back. I think the real decision came when I realised that my phone had not saved the Tow Company’d caller i.d. – so i ddn’t have a way to call him back without calling Sierra Truck again. As such, I decided to hit the road and continue on my way but avoid any steep passes once I was off this stretch of road.