Should You Buy Road Service As Part of Your Car Insurance?

by: Thomas Ajava

It is amazing how things have changed in these modern times. It wasn't that long ago that when you had problems with your car, you had to hike up and down the road trying to find somebody to help you. Well those days are long gone. Now there is something known as road service. It is truly one of the great inventions of these modern times!

What is road service? It is exactly what the name suggests. If you have a problem, you simply contact the phone number provided. A service professional will be sent out to your location to assist you. The service professional is usually a local provider who will take a look at the car and make any simple repairs on the spot. If the car can't be repaired quickly and easily, they will then arrange for the car to be towed to a facility. You'll then be given a ride home or transportation will be arranged. It is a wonderful service!

If you purchased a new car in the last five years, you're probably already well aware of what road service is. It did not originate as an insurance product. Instead, car manufacturers started offering it as an enticement to buy their cars. Manufacturers such as BMW and Mercedes were some of the first to do this. As is often the case in industry, the other manufacturers started offering it once they saw how successful it was for the original manufacturers.

If you have a new car, there's no reason to buy road service as part of your car insurance. The manufacturer will cover it for an initial period that can be anywhere between three and five years depending on the program their offering. But what if that time is past? Should you buy roadside service as part of your car insurance? The answer is that you probably should not. There are a couple of reasons.

The first reason you should not buy road service as part of your car insurance has to do with the quality of the service. Simply put, other groups like AAA are far better at handling it. They've been doing it forever and they have the service down to a fine art. When you have a problem, you just call and AAA takes care of everything. As an additional benefit, you do not have to file a claim or anything of that sort. Everything is simply handled by AAA as part of the flat fee you pay for membership.

There's an additional reason why you should not buy road service as part of your car insurance that is little more subtle. Some car insurance companies consider calls for road service to constitute a claim. The premiums you pay for your insurance are determined by a number of different factors. One of the factors is the number of claims you make on your policy. You can probably see where I'm going with this. Let's assume you have three problems with cars on the road in the next five years and call for road service each time. If your insurance company considers each of those problems to be a claim, your premiums are going to skyrocket! That will be a disaster.

Road service is a great thing and you should definitely arrange to have it. That being said, including as part of your car insurance is probably not the best idea. There are other options that are better from both an economic and strategic perspective.