Yesterday morning M’hijito’s battery died. So I had to drive up to his place and chauffeur him to work, and then pick him up after work and lend him the Dog Chariot so he could chase down a battery. My friend La Maya asked why we don’t have a AAA (American Automobile Association) membership, since they allegedly will come and replace the battery for you, wherever you are.
Welp. There’s a reason we don’t. We’ve both had some pretty negative experiences with AAA, which is not cheap—membership in the Arizona branch ranges from $55 to $165 a year.
After M’hijito graduated from college, he was working in San Francisco and driving a junker that was second-hand when he’d gotten it in high school and that had barely survived the usual first-driver’s-license crash. I was concerned about him driving that thing back and forth across Death Valley and waypoints, and so I bought him a AAA membership. We sustained the membership for several years, and he still had it when the dot-com bust left him unemployed and forced him to return to Arizona.
It was a very unhappy and very harassed young man who loaded up his gear and set off across the inland valleys and deserts in 110-degree heat. Naturally, his car crapped out in the middle of nowhere…across the Arizona line. He called AAA for help, and they refused to help him!
Why? Because he was a member of the California AAA, and it didn’t apply if he was out of the state.
Uhm. Well. That was a new one on me. Boy, was I pissed when he got home with that story!
It took the kid forever to get himself rescued from somewhere in the desert outside of Blythe and to get his car operable enough to limp the rest of the way into Phoenix.
Strike 1.
Then there was the time SDXB bought the RV. On our maiden voyage, we were cruising back from Flagstaff and hit the Valley at mid-day in 115-degree heat. As we were tooling down the I-17, a tire blew and knocked a hole in the truck’s side.
SDXB, being a manly man, would never think of calling for help. He pulled out the jack the previous owner had left and…voilà! It wasn’t a truck jack! It didn’t fit the vehicle’s Dodge chassis.
It’s hard to describe how hot an asphalt pavement is on a 115-degree day. SDXB gets down on the ground and starts to wrestle with this thing, trying to figure a way to jack the truck up enough that he can get the spare on.
Finally, I walk off the freeway (this is pre-cell days) and hike through the unholy heat to a bar up the road. By the time I get there I’m close to fainting. The hostess asks if she should call 911. I say no, I just need a glass of water, but we may need 911 for my boyfriend up the road. She lets me use their pay phone to call AAA.
And once again, they will not come!
Why? Because contrary to what SDXB was told by their sales rep, AAA does not cover RVs!
I called the Highway Patrol’s roadside assistance. They never showed up. Several cops passed us; they ignored us. I hiked back to the bar a second time and called for help again. No one ever came to help us.
Finally a big, scary biker type in a gas-guzzling junker pulled over. He had a truck jack with him. He jumped out of his car, whipped out the jack, and changed the damn tire for SDXB, who by then was about to expire.
Strike 2.
And then there was the time I took my German shepherd, Anna, hiking in the Dreamy Draw desert preserve. Again, it was a very hot day. Though we’d started at dawn, by the time we got back to the trailhead it was coming on to 9:00 a.m. and temps were fast rising toward 100 degrees. None of the water fountains in the parking lot worked, and we had run out of water.
Dog jumps in the car. I turn the ignition: nothing. Battery’s dead.
I didn’t have a cell, but talked a fellow hiker into letting me use his to call AAA.
Half an hour later, a AAA truck shows up. The large, unfriendly driver little-womans me and says he’ll jump-start the battery (no offer was made to provide a new battery). Anna dislikes this guy at first sight, and I can tell from her body language that she’s calculating how best to remove his lower leg. So I put her in the back seat and then I say OK, but let me turn on the ignition. And I say, in no uncertain terms, Please let me start the ignition. Do not try to get in my car! The dog will bite you if you do!
I was not kidding, but apparently because the little woman said it, he figured it was OK to ignore this advice. He hooked up the jumper cables and then, before I could stop him, he grabbed the door and hopped into the driver’s seat.
Of course, the German shepherd just went bat-shit! He dodged out of the car a fraction of an instant before she could nail him.
He was so pissed off, and my saying “that’s why I asked you to let me start the car” didn’t help his mood. He stalked off and roared out of the parking lot.
The instant I sat down in the front seat, the car died again. His truck was not out of sight.
I borrowed another cell phone, called AAA, and told them the car had died before the guy had got a half-a-block down the road. The despatcher said he would turn around and come back.
An hour and a half later, which the dog and I passed in 100-degree heat with no shade and no water, another truck came along.
Strike 3.
I canceled my AAA then and have never re-upped. Considering the number of years I had belonged to AAA—most of my adult life—and the very, very few times I’d called for help, I would say no, AAA is absolutely, positively not worth the cost. When I’ve needed them most, they’ve let me down.
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