"It was one of those small domestic moments that tells you everything you need to know about the modern British service industry. I was visiting my parents, both octogenarians, both long past the stage of bothering to shop around for anything, when an envelope from the AA thudded onto the doormat. My mother opened it with the slight suspicion that all letters now require, only to find the annual renewal notice for their breakdown cover."
"Sixty-four years! That's longer than most marriages, and certainly longer than any of the call centre staff at AA Insurance have been alive. My stepfather has been a paying customer since the Beatles were still playing in Hamburg. If loyalty were a virtue the AA truly valued, he'd have a gold card, a free tow truck, and a man in a yellow jacket stationed permanently outside the house."
"But no. The letter was a masterpiece of corporate doublespeak - a thank you note wrapped around a quiet mugging. £260.38 for a service that, as it turns out, could be had for a third of the price if you knew where to look. Being the dutiful son (and, frankly, unable to resist a little consumer sleuthing), I fired up the laptop. Three minutes on the AA's own website later, I had a quote for exactly the same cover: £97.64."
An elderly couple received an AA renewal notice charging £260.38 for breakdown cover despite a stated discount. The letter thanked them for 64 years of loyalty while offering no tangible reward. An online quote for the same cover showed an introductory price of £97.64 and a stated full price of £162.43, revealing a large gap between renewal and new-customer rates. The pricing structure demonstrates deliberate price discrimination and reliance on customer inertia. Longstanding loyalty resulted in higher charges rather than benefits. The presentation of a 'discount' alongside an inflated renewal amount operates as corporate doublespeak to reassure while extracting more payment.
Read at Business Matters
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