My Coach Net experience tonight.

I think they all have an accident exclusion.

I dumped overpriced CN a long time ago after reading many comments about their very poor service and excuses they use not to provide service. They kept charging my CC even after I dropped their service that caused me extra hassle to stop. Been happy with AAA and USAA as a backup.

ferndaleflyer wrote:
Short story: I tow a Smart car on a dolly. Tonight while loading I ran the front wheels over the front of the dolly. Coach Net denied to help me saying it was an “accident” and was not covered. A towing service wanted $200 to help. Oh well, a nice young fellow stopped and helped me and In about 5min we had it on the dolly correctly. So much for help from Coach Net.

They said it was an accident because it was. If a tree blows over and falls on your house, do you call Coach Net? It's not the providers fault you never read your contract.

CN always been fast and never had a problem with them.

My horrible coach net experience... and my letter to the CEO


Subject: 29 Hours waiting for a tow


Mr. Ostlund,

Yes, we were on the side of the road for 29 hours and this was no rural country road. It was US 1 in Maimi-Dade county Florida with cars and trucks whizzing by at 60-80 mph literally a few feet from the side of our motorhome. To say I'm disappointed in the service and response from Coach-Net would be an understatement.

On Friday December 3rd we left our home in Apollo Beach, Fl to spend a few nights at Key Largo before going to Key West. At about 14:00 my coolant temperature rapidly rose and the alarm went off. I moved to the side of the road. This was at Mile Marker 122 on US1 south of Homestead, FL. The infamous 18 mile stretch. The road here is a narrow 2 lane highway with the lanes separated by Jersey barriers. The shoulder is very narrow and in many places not even wide enough for a car, fortunately I was able to find a spot that we could actually get out of the travel lane by about 5 feet without sinking into the mud .

After assessing the situation and finding a catastrophic water pump failure, I call Coach-Net at 14:30 for assistance.
The first person I spoke to asked a few questions and then passed me to a technical staff member. We discussed the situation and he said he would get a tow truck to the scene. I was told it would be about an hour before the truck would arrive. Well, that wasn't even close. At 19:30, a full 5 hours later, a truck shows up, the driver looks at the situation and says he isn't able to tow a motorhome due to the configuration of his truck.

I call back Coach-Net and after some discussion they start to try to find another tow truck. After a few more hours, they decide that it would be good to inform the Florida Highway Patrol of our situation. A trooper comes by and provides visibility to the oncoming traffic with his emergency lights. Another tow company was finally dispatched and when they got to the scene the driver said he could not tow from the front, but would tow from the rear by raising the coach by the trailer hitch. I told him and pointed out the label on the hitch, that the hitch was rated at 1000 lbs tongue weight capacity and that the coach weighs 42000 lbs and that there was no way I was going to allow him to even attempt to do that. If I hadn't stopped him, I'm sure there would have been tens of thousands of dollars damage. He left and soon afterwards, the trooper had to leave . It was now after 03:00 Saturday...over 12 hours since I called in the issue.

I called Coach-Net again. They decided there was nothing to do at this late hour and would resume their (feeble) efforts in the morning. I was told I'd be contacted at 07:00 .

07:00 comes and goes and a little after 08:00 I get a call and they are going to resume trying to find a wrecker. I was promised call backs on status, but never received them. I had to call back myself to find out what was going on. Finally at 16:30 Saturday a couple of guys show up and said they had it under control. These guys were super professional, efficient and demonstrated outstanding team work. After a short period of time, during which they showed me what they were doing, they had us all hooked up and ready to go. But, as we were staring to pull out, one of their airbags on the rear axle failed and in interest of safety, they decided to unhook and drive back to the shop to get another truck.

They returned with a different truck and reattached the motorhome and we were finally off the side of the road at 19:30 Saturday. A full 29 hours after the time I called in for assistance.

When we got to the repair shop they backed us into position and unhooked. As I was thanking them for their outstanding service , I asked why they hadn't been called earlier. They told me that they were not on Coach-Net's vendor list and were called in only in dire situations. These guys were by far the best. You should have them at the top of the list for towing large RV's. They are Edwin and Kevin from American Eagle Towing. The other companies that showed up should be removed from your vendor list.


The reason I am sending this letter to you is to make sure you are aware of how poorly this call for emergency assistance was handled and that hopefully you will take corrective actions to prevent this from happening to someone else.

Some thoughts to consider :

- make sure the vendor you dispatch understands what is being towed and make sure they have the equipment to do so.

- the second tow operator obviously had no experience in towing a motorhome and if he had tried to tow from the trailer hitch as he had wanted to do, he would have caused extensive damage. It is likely that if it had been another person in my situation they might have taken him for his word and their motorhome would have been destroyed. You need to thoroughly vet your vendors to help prevent unnecessary damage.

- we were in a potentially very dangerous situation on a heavily traveled road. Police notification by your team should not have taken over 10 hours.

- When your staff says they are going to call back in a certain period of time, they need to do so. Other than a couple times when they did call back as promised, in general, I had to call back and wait on hold to get status.

- Scrub your vendor list. You obviously have incompetent service providers that are wasting your time, my time and their time and at the same time destroying your reputation as a quality service provider.

- A 29 hour wait to get EMERGENCY service is not acceptable under any circumstances.

Try to put yourself in the situation that we were in and see what your reactions would have been.


I look forward to your response.

Without getting into the details, I also had a poor coachnet experience when I had a blowout in Hampstead,MD.
What agravates and frustrates the consumer is that Coachnet advertises and promotes that they provide towing services for RV's.
However it seems they often have trouble finding tow operators that can tow large RV's.
They collect lots of up front money on the premise they can provide efficient RV towing, however thev reality is they are really not prepared,familiar or equipped to tow large vehicles. My experience was very disappointing.

I'm beginning to wonder if any of these Road Service Companies are worth the yearly cost. I have no idea how much I've paid over the last 10 years and only needed a tow twice. I'm thinking that for the few times needed their cost is higher than the out of pocket cost, especially since my last need I never got any service from GS, paid for the tow and did get refunded by GS, but no where near to cover what I've paid for their service.

I've had to use Coach-net. My experience was very good. I know what a tow in our area costs due to the "deadhead fee". When a tow can (and often does) costs over $1k, Coach-net pays for itself. Finding someone who can tow my 23,000lb bus is difficult to do. But I expect that because the tow trucks in our area that can tow something like my bus are few (as in 2 trucks with different companies over 100 miles apart). And the driver of the one we used is constantly on the road in a 1000 mile radius of his "base". These specialty tow trucks are in high demand and are few in number. Often commercial vehicles get priority over recreational vehicles.

More proof that optional “insurance” policies often aren’t of a net benefit to the customer.
It sucks but virtually noone will sue a corporation over $100 or $1000, so they have that going for them…

It’s interesting that when a semi is involved, the police manage to get a wrecker capable of towing 80,000# almost immediately. Hmmm