Lantley wrote:
fulltimedaniel wrote:
While it is certainly true that there are only so many tow companies out there to service all of the Road Service contracts. There probably are some important differences in HOW those services are contracted and under what terms.
The Tow company may service the more lucrative contracts first, possibly the GSE contract doesn't compel them to make a call at all whereas AAA or Coachnet might.
The problem really is that you are buying something that is not provided by the seller. The seller is just a middleman, like in the case of GSE Road Service and the others. This ultimately means that you as the customer has NO IDEA what the actual agreement is between the provider (TOW Company) and the "Seller" (GSE). In other words you are buying a service who's contract details are unknown to you.
While there is an agreement between you and GSE you have no idea what the actual contract for that service contains and how it may adversely affect you under certain circumstances. Therefore there is no way to make a really truly informed decision about which is actually the best service.
I am a GSE Road Service member but I am also highly skeptical of the entire setup given the fact that the service agreement is rather vague on several points and we hear the same sort of complaints here over and over again.
Consider you only hear Good Sam complaints because Goodsam provides a venue for people to air their complaints.
Coach net and AAA do not provide a forum or venue to air their dirty laundry that I am aware of.
As a result we do not read of complaints, that does not mean complaints don't exist. We simply don't hear about them.
In the end the grass is not greener on the other side.
There are remote areas and places that are not serviced very well.
Unfortunately they use the same tow trucks... We just dial a different number, but end up in the same place
I see this reasoning often in these discussions and it doesnt hold water. There are plenty of rating sites (I am generally not a fan of them) where you can find such complaints about other road service services. This site serves the BEST Interests of GSE or it wouldn't exist. Remember it is not meant to benefit YOU as much as it is to keep these kinds of complaints off of the wider web and other sites. Keeping the squabbles in the family as it were where they can be handled quietly.
In any case, as most business people know every complaint that you actually HEAR about means there are 50 that have the same problem that just keep quiet and drop the service. Given those numbers and the number of complaints one sees here means there is a serious problem.
The real question is; Why GSE seems unable to fix this issue?
And in my experience Yes the Grass can be greener on the other side in many cases. By moving by business I have often found a better deal and better service.
But the issue of my post was the third party relationship and the fact the customer is kept in the dark about what the agreement is betwen the Seller (GSE) and the Provider (Tow company) Thus we really don;t know what to expect for our money.
