Complaint Review: AllState Motor Club - Nationwide

 My boyfriend signed up for the AllState Motor Club through his AllState Insurance.  In approximately 3 weeks we were stranded on the side of a busy interstate highway with a flat tire. We contacted the company and they could not find his name on their database. During the time that they were searching for his name, my boyfriend started to change the tire himself.  When he was done changing the tire, they finally found his membership number and verified that he had coverage.  This process took about 20 minutes.  I contacted their customer service department and they offered to us a free year for both of us and refunded him the membership costs. We accepted the offer.  Later that evening a person was killed on the side of that highway and also on the following evening.

About 8 months later, my boyfriends car became disabled on the same major interstate, in the other direction. I went to his aide and called the motorclub for a tow. They took over 1 hour to respond to our request for a tow, and at that time informed us that we had a combined membership policy and used all services for the year.  This is not what I had originally agreed to. They said that we had to pay $99 for a tow truck to come out plus a per mileage charge.  We were in a dangerous situation due to the high snow bank covering most of the breakdown lane, rush hour traffic and now his car battery went dead due to the prolonged wait and his car was behind mine. We agreed and gave them the credit card information.

We thought we were going to be killed.

I called back customer service and alerted them to this fact and they said to call the State Police, in which we did and there response was that we had contacted a towing service and there was nothing else they could do at that point.  Three State Police Troopers had stopped and said the same and our tow should be on it's way quickly since it was such a dangerous situation.

By this point, we were on the side of the road for nearly 2 hours!

I called again and they told me that it would be a minimum of a 3 hour wait in addition to the 2 hours we already waited!

 I then informed them to cancel the charge for the towing service and I would call a local towing company for a faster response.  The local towing company said, we can be there in 15 minutes, and they were! Their charge was $120 cash to tow the vehicle in which we agreed since we needed to get out of the dangerous situation we were in.

I contacted customer service and the woman Chris advised me that she would offer us the reimbursement of the cost of membership for both of us, $84, and 1 more roadside assistant to be used within a month and a half from the initial call that was referenced.  I left several messages that this was not acceptable and she has not responded back to me.

I would not have this roadside assistance with AllState MotorClub if it was free!!  They do not care if you are in dangerous predictaments and does not have acceptable terms if they should screw up.

I am bringing this issue to the Consumer Protection Agency and any and all other agencies that I can to let the whole country know, not to sign up for a membership, next time, it could cost a life.