Safe Speed Forums

Lessons learnt driving abroad
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/07/2007

Hilary Macaskill describes a motoring holiday that went terribly wrong and offers advice for anyone driving on holiday this summer

Our French holiday was going well. Then we took a wrong turning off the A8 motorway in Nice and, on the road out of town, collided with a car emerging from a street on the right. As we pulled into a parking bay, the other driver reversed back up the hill at huge speed and disappeared from view. "Not insured," said a bystander.

As we looked at our damage and pondered, the other driver reappeared on foot, demanded money, snatched my husband Michael's phone as he used it, hit and kicked us both as we tried to retrieve it, jumped into our car to get the keys and was yanked out by my husband who, at this point, had the presence of mind to yell at me to get back into the car and lock the doors.

As we reversed out, the other driver seized a stone and hurled it at our windscreen, which shattered - luckily only on the passenger side - but held firm. A few miles up the road when we stopped to gather our wits, we discovered that one of the spectators - of whom there were many - had stolen my bag with passport, money and phone.

Still, we felt lucky: we weren't badly hurt and the car was just about driveable. We made our way through the spectacular valleys of the Alpes Maritimes to the remote and picturesque gîte we had rented for the week with friends. We borrowed our friend's mobile phone to stop credit cards and phone accounts.

Then the real problems began. Dealing with the consequences: continual phone calls; explaining the situation again and again to different people; actions promised that didn't happen; reservation of a hire car with a boot too small for our luggage; more wrong information over the eventual hire car. But we learnt lessons.

The next day, Sunday, we went to the police: we spent 4½ hours in the gendarmerie (but they gave us filter coffee) and we phoned our breakdown and car insurance companies. Each of these sub-contracted its services to another organisation, which sub-contracted again: in all, during the week, we spoke to eight different agencies and 16 different people. The bit where the car was picked up from the town nearest to where we were staying worked well: a breakdown truck from Nice arrived within the two hours promised. The mechanics who came in it thought the damage could be quite swiftly reparable, depending on getting parts and clearance from insurance.

The hire car was problematic. A major difficulty, we discovered, was that even if we hired a car we could not take it back to Britain. We would have to leave it at Calais and pick up another one in Folkestone. This would mean arriving at Eurotunnel with a Saab-load of stuff and no way of transporting that and ourselves to Folkestone and the next car. No one seemed to have an idea of how we could deal with this, though the situation must have arisen before.

It took three days before the sub-sub-contractors of the breakdown insurance company arranged a suitable hire car - we had to spend much of one afternoon on the phone dealing with the confusion between the English hire company and its French partner - and we had to drive to Menton to get it. But it was not our insurer's fault that we had to deal with an irritable and impatient representative at Europcar.

Nor was it our insurer's fault that the only car then available was a Renault Laguna, which we really didn't enjoy driving. By the middle of the next day, just as we were getting used to it, we ran over a pile of pebbles on the steep mountain road to our gîte and had to spend the next day searching for replacements for one punctured and one damaged tyre.

We spent £85 on making, but mostly receiving (on our friend's UK mobile), calls from all the different agencies involved. Sometimes this would be when we were walking on a mountain - we were still making an effort to extract some holiday from the week. We would sit down under a tree, get the file from the backpack and set up an office station. Halfway through the week, my husband said: "That's one thing I left off the packing list - a hole punch." On Thursday, after we had, in exasperation, finally visited the breakdown garage ourselves and established that the car would not, despite conflicting noises from the insurer, be examined until Friday, we realised we couldn't continue the holiday after Saturday and we bought rail tickets home. The journey along the Côte d'Azur was delightful: there's a lot to be said for train travel.

For detailed country-by country information on driving abroad, visit the Travel section of the AA website at www.theaa.com.
What happened next

When we arrived back in England after our curtailed holiday, car-less and bruised (physically and mentally) by our experience of being roughed up and robbed in Nice - and then having to deal with insurance companies - we thought our troubles were over.

It turned out to be just the beginning.

I spent the next few days composing a six-page letter detailing events and suggesting improvements to procedures, discovered the names of relevant managing directors and sent it to all agencies involved - car insurer Saga and its overseas agent Van Ameyde, breakdown cover provider Direct Line and its agent Green Flag and car rental car service Enterprise.

Meanwhile, my husband spent his time on the phone. The first stage was straightforward - Saga referred us to Van Ameyde, who confirmed the car would be repatriated for repair: it would be back within two weeks.

The second stage was other claims. The first stumbling block was the discovery that the £300 allowance for return travel to England was a total, not per person. Since it had cost us £600 to get trains back to London, with an overnight stay in Nîmes, this was bad news.

"We were told it was £300 each," said my husband. "We'll check the transcript of the phone call," said the operative. She phoned back: he was right, he had been told that it was £300 each, but it made no difference - the policy stated £300 in total. He asked to speak to the manager. The manager said, "Well, I can stick to the policy and then you can complain and the complaints department will tell me to pay you, so why don't we just agree to pay you now?" Eight days later my husband phoned to check progress on the car. There was a silence at the other end of the phone. The man at Van Ameyde had forgotten to arrange repatriation. He was apologetic.

I received the first response to one of my letters. The vice-president of sales at Enterprise rang. I had "highlighted loopholes" and he emphasised that they were doing "a lot of work in this area". That evening a bouquet arrived, with a card of sympathy from Enterprise. Then followed letters from Saga and Van Ameyde, both "grateful for the recommendations" and promising to "review procedures". I also had an acknowledgement from Direct Line but nothing from Green Flag.

The car finally arrived back 19 days after us. We agreed it would go to a Saga-approved garage rather than our own because we could then have a fortnight's use of a hire car. Then Michael had another call. "Where's the bumper, the wing, the headlights?" he was asked, as though they might be lurking in his suitcase. Much of the car was missing.

The next days were fraught - we were even (wrongly) told there was no bonnet. In the 16-day gap between assessment and repatriation being arranged, the Nice garage had stripped our car down. The carrier had not bothered to check that all the bits were there.

So a fairly minor collision had turned into major damage. One grim day, Saga told us the car would now cost so much to repair - the figure of £7,000 was mentioned - that it would probably be a write-off. I cracked. I rang the Saga director, pouring out our tale of woe to his assistant and pointing out the injustice, adding that we hadn't even been able to go away for a few days to repair the trauma of the holiday because of the incessant tracking necessary.

Later the director phoned me. The good news was that the car would be repaired. And then he completely surprised me - he was sending me a hotel brochure and a cheque for £500 - "if you don't mind" - so that we could go and recuperate. I was touched.

The cheque arrived, with a rather legalistic letter about full and final settlement. I put it in my drawer until we got the car back. Three promised delivery dates passed. It finally arrived after seven weeks and only after much pleading that we needed it for a trip for a significant birthday. And then it was returned to the garage for final repairs.

I wrote again to Direct Line and Green Flag. I eventually got a reply from the managing director of Direct Line addressing some of our complaints. Around this time I had a request for renewal of breakdown cover. I explained why I wouldn't be taking it up.

I still had no response from Green Flag.

We didn't take up the offer of the hire car - the process had dragged on so long that we could never decide which fortnight would be best to use it. Instead, we went for day trips on the train to sedate places like Frinton and Bexhill. In our post-traumatic state of mind, that was much more to our liking.

10 things we will do in future when driving abroad

• After an accident, remove the ignition key and don't leave a car door open. It's true we were legitimately distracted by trying to get the snatched phone back, but this oversight allowed my bag to be stolen.
• Take photographs of the damage and of the whole car. This could provide invaluable when - as happened to us - the car arrived back in England minus wing, bumper and headlights - some of which had been completely untouched in the accident.
• Take complete car insurance and breakdown cover policies with us, not just the phone numbers. This would have saved some of the precious mobile phone time when we were asking questions to which answers could be found in the policy.
• Get reference numbers and names for every new contact. We spoke to 16 different people in eight agencies who were mostly sympathetic to our extreme plight, but some of them didn't appear to talk to each other.
  Buy local phone cards and look for a phone box. Unfortunately, in France at least, they are as scarce as in Britain these days, but it's much cheaper and easier to transact at least some of the business from them, not least because receiving calls there is free (unlike a UK mobile). When asked, people would always ring back.
• Keep phoning and chasing. Even with the best of intentions, the people staffing the phones move on to other cases.
• Find out at the beginning if you can pay for temporary repairs to get home and claim it back. We were only told about this on Wednesday evening. If we'd known this at the beginning we could at least have considered that option.
• Keep a copy of passport details in a different place.
• Take a notebook and a file with plastic pockets (just in case), for all the receipts and documentation.
• Pack a hole punch…