A False Start – the Tale of a Breakdown

05/02/2026

This is a tale of a motorhome breakdown. It is somewhat cathartic. I want to get it written down so that I can see in hindsight whether it was worth the stress that it caused in the moment. And you might find it entertaining, or you might just think ‘First World Problems’.

The summary: All in all our trip was delayed by 4 days and we were £177.24 out of pocket. Not the worst experience, I’ve read about a lot worse. But there were two spikes of stress: Group1 Ford not answering their phones, and Ford Assist taking four phone calls to decide they wouldn’t help us get back to Basingstoke. Those are the things that make this a sour memory. Poor service just sticks in the craw.

Sunday 1st Feb

It starts on Sunday 1st February. We’d packed up the van ready to head off on our usual skiing trip. The flat had been cleaned as it’s on the market and we wanted to make sure it was perfect for viewings. Only the new front door was annoying us, we’d had it installed on Saturday so that we are compliant with fire regulations and really it needed a bit of tidying up for it’s eventual decoration. I fired off an email to the estate agent asking her to make sure she explained the situation.

Once we were happy we made a leisurely departure towards Canterbury. We had all day and were quite relaxed.

Somewhere on the M4 Paul turned around to me and quite calmly said ‘I’ve lost all power’. He was so calm I just thought this was an exaggeration, but it wasn’t. We slowly ground to a halt on the motorway and with no hard shoulder it was a pretty scary experience. A few minutes later Paul tried the ignition again, we restarted and slowly made our way to the emergency layby.

I tried to use the SOS phone, but regardless of how high I turned the volume I couldn’t here the person on the other end. No problem, a few minutes later some Highways Traffic Officers turned up to check on us.

I looked up the details for our breakdown service. We have a bank account with Nationwide and get AA breakdown as part of the package. In the meantime Paul restarted the engine. Thinking it seemed fine he drove back out onto the M4. Of course it wasn’t fine and in any case no one should just drive into motorway traffic. So we repeated the same experience again. This time getting a well deserved telling off from the Highways patrol.

I had managed to contact the AA by now. After a bit of a frustrating ‘Press 1 for this’, ‘Press 2 for that’ set of options I got through to a lovely human being who was perfectly calm as she took our details and arranged for recovery within the hour.

While we waited a Volvo broke down and slid into the layby behind us. The Highways officers shifted us around a bit so that both recovery vehicles would fit into the space and we exchanged tales of woe with the occupants of the car while we stood behind the barrier waiting for the recovery vehicles.

Our AA recovery driver was lovely. He pulled the van up onto the back of the truck and explained to us what would happen next. His job was to get us to a place of safety – Reading Services in this instance. He would ring National Highways, confirm that we were being recovered and ask them to close the first lane so that he could safely exit the layby. Then he would arrange for a technician to come to Reading Services to meet us. We climbed up into the back of his cab, relieved to be out of the drizzle.

At Reading Services he dropped us off in the caravan and motorhome parking area and confirmed that the technician would arrive in about another hour. We popped into the services, bought some dinner and used the loos.

The technician arrived in the dark and plugged into the ECU to run diagnostics. They confirmed what I already knew from the Ford Pass app. We had a turbo issue. He took a look but couldn’t find anything obviously wrong. As we’re still under warranty he suggested that we should call Ford Assist, they would be able to get us into a local Ford dealership as an emergency and it would probably a lot quicker than the AA recovering us home and then us having to book in with our local ford dealership who wouldn’t treat us as an emergency.

He carried on looking at the engine while I phoned Ford Assist. The conversation with the call centre for Ford Assist was difficult. They are based in India and didn’t have any comprehension of UK geography. After a couple of repeated conversations we managed to ascertain that they would contact a local recovery company who would take us to a Ford garage not more than 30 miles from our location. I tried to find out what would happen next and the lady rattled off a list of possibilities. I said I’d ring them back once we knew where we were being recovered to.

While I’d been having a frustrating conversation the AA technician had found the problem – the turbo pipe had a soft spot (‘feels like a condom’, he said) and was collapsing, stopping the air from getting through. We were so relieved to know that there was an obvious problem, hopefully that should just mean quite a simple fitting of a new part. Before he left he also suggested that we should go into WH Smiths in the services and explain that we’d been recovered from the motorway, they would waive any fees for staying over the usual two hour limit.

The boss of the recovery company phoned me twenty minutes later. He explained that the job had come through but he wasn’t meant to contact me until he’d had authorisation from Ford Assist. He also said that he knew that might take a couple of hours and he wanted to get us recovered asap, as much for his own staff as for our comfort. In hindsight we should have asked if he could have left it til the morning. But anyway…the recovery driver turned up at about 8:30 and towed us on a heavy duty A Frame type contraption (he was already carrying a car) to Basingstoke. We asked if he thought we should stay in our van overnight at the garage. The thought of ringing Ford Assist and trying to sort out alternative accommodation was just too much. He said it was up to us. The whole area was double yellow lines so it would be a risk. We decided that on a Sunday night it wasn’t too much of a risk so opted to stay overnight.

Our second recovery – being towed behind the recovery truck this time

Monday 2nd Feb

The next morning Paul went into the service department to explain the situation. Needless to say they were not aware of our impending arrival, it was very early after all. Paul explained what the AA technician had found and offered to show someone, but they said they wouldn’t be able to look at the van until Wednesday.

In the mean time I phoned the CAMC who I’d booked the ferries through. The lady on the other end of the phone thought we’d have to cancel and re-book because we’d already missed our outbound ferry. She left me on hold for some time before coming back and explaining she’d spoken to DFDS. We didn’t need to cancel, just reschedule. What a relief. Optimistically we booked for Friday.  We could always change it again.

Then I phoned Ford Assist. After going round in circles several times (‘your van is at the compound’, ‘no it’s at the garage’) we established that we needed to either get home or find somewhere to stay. We’d had an offer from my godmother who lives nearby and said we could stay at her’s. In hindsight maybe we should have. But the Ford Assist team offered us a hire car so we took them up on the offer and anyway it would be easier to distract ourselves at home.

The Exeter branch of Enterprise called us and asked where we needed the car to be delivered, rather surprised to find we were in Basingstoke. Yet again Ford Assist had got things muddled up. Luckily Enterprise were able to switch things around. They couldn’t change the vehicle category though. We had told Ford Assist that we only needed a car sized vehicle but we ended up with a minibus. We decided to return in to Enterprise as soon as we got home, we had a car we could use at home and we knew we wouldn’t be able to pick the van up until Thursday at the earliest. We’d had the car for about five hours.

Tuesday 3rd Feb

Finally at home, Paul made use of some time to tidy up the new front door, which distracted him from the situation. I went for some long runs and we both walked our friend’s dog, a great stress reliever..

Wednesday 4th Feb

On Wednesday, after lunch we decided to call the garage in Basingstoke. They said they would look at the van on Wednesday so a quick check up would be useful to make sure that was still the plan. We called, and were put on hold. We were on hold on and off for nearly two and a half hours. One phone on the original call and another trying different options, while I also used their online chat and facebook messenger. We tried other departments, trying to get messages to them. And I left a shitty review on Google Maps.

It was the review on Google Maps that seemed to do the trick. We were finally called, at 17:37, to be told that no one had looked at our van. It would be looked at tomorrow. We were not impressed. A quick call to tell us that they were not looking at it, or someone actually answering the phone, would have made a massive difference to the whole experience.

Thursday 5th Feb

On Thursday morning we were promised a call back. We didn’t get it until 11:43 but we had been following the movement of the van on the tracker so we could see it had been moved around to the service centre workshop and we could see they had taken the van on a test drive, and had to re-start it on a roundabout in Basingstoke.

They told us that yes, it was the turbo pipe and they had ordered the part which should be delivered later that day. What a shame the time was wasted, the part could have been ordered on Monday if they’d just spent 5 minutes having a look.

We explained that we were two hours away from the garage so we really needed to know if it would be ready or whether we should just rebook our ferry. After telling us that they couldn’t guarantee that the part would arrive Paul offered to buy the part himself and drive it up. A bit of too-ing and fro-ing and they eventually said that yes, we should arrange to get back to Baisingstoke to pick the van up that day. Happy days.

Feeling relieved, we phone Ford Assist to try to arrange transport back to Baisingstoke. I called and the lady on the phone said yes, a car would be booked. I took care to emphasise that we only need a car and it would only be needed for that day.

Then we started to pack up ready to return and I missed a crucial phone call, saying that we already had a hire car so the booking had been cancelled.

I phoned back to try to explain that we didn’t have a hire car. It had been taken back. I spoke to someone who said they would pass the message onto the right department. I was not confident. I gave it 20 minutes and phoned again. Had the message been picked up? We were running out of time. It took another two phone calls before I got through to someone who said that the hire car would not be provided and that Ford Assist would not be able to get us back to Basingstoke. Why it took so long to tell us this I don’t know. Apparently because the first hire car had been booked for two days (not on our request) we had used up all of the assistance that was available. It was an absolute no, they suggested it was Group 1’s responsibility to get the vehicle back to us.

We had to decide what to do. We asked Group 1 if they would be ok if we left our car with them for two months but we we right to be pessimistic about this. It was too long for their insurance. I looked at trains but it was now too late to guarantee arriving before closing time. All of this while we were driving to Enterprise in Exeter. Luckily Enterprise did have a vehicle available immediately and £150 lighter we were on our way.

We dropped the hire car off at Enterprise Basingstoke and they drove us to Group 1 where two frazzled travellers were reunited with their vehicle just before closing time. Onwards we would go putting this behind us (apart from a strongly worded complaint to Ford Assist).

And if you got this far then I’m impressed.