On my way home from school yesterday (about 30 miles away) I got a blow out on the freeway. I heard a loud pop, but everything looked and felt fine, about ten seconds later the low tire pressure light came on. Even thought everything felt fine, I got off ant the next off ramp and pulled over in the first stop I could find. It just so happened to be an alley in a not so great part of town.



After inspecting the tire I could see that Mazda’s stupid tire kit wasn’t going to work. I found the number for Mazda roadside assistance and called them. Right away a real person answered the phone. I told him my story and he said no problem, he’d send a flat bed out to tow me to nearest dealer. He goes on the tell me that the nearest dealer is in Long Beach, which is about 15 miles in the wrong direction, and about 28 miles from my house. I said “why not home, only live 8 miles from here?” he said that they can’t allow that. Now tell me, its 6:00pm on a Friday night, and they want to tow me to a dealer who will not look at it until Monday morning, and then I have to find a ride home from the dealer. I told them that this is crap, any car store can fix a tire… there is no reason to make may car sit at the dealer for 3 days and strand me there. The taxi ride home would cost more than the flatbed.



“I’m sorry sir, have a good day” and they hung up!

**** MAZDA!

 

Wtf? Did you catch his name?

What did you end up doing?

 

WTH? so what'd you end up doing? Yea I heard Mazda Roadside Assistance sucks.

 

Well, I called AAA and waited 4 hours for flat bed to come out and tow me home. It was a scary 4 hours...

 

Ok.... but how did that help? So now you've got the thing home with a flat, where do you go from there?

 

I take the tire off the car and get it fixed which i'm about to do right now.

 

New tire is on the car without any problems!

 

Are you an AAA member? Just curious.

 

The description of the Roadside Assistance makes it very clear they will tow the car the nearest dealer. I know this was frustrating for you but as a practical matter they can't tow the car to wherever the driver wants to go even though in this case it would have been less distance and more convenient for you. Human nature being what it is, I am sure some people would then want Mazda to come back again and take the car someplace else. I don't think Mazda did anything different than other companies would do for cars in a similiar price range as ours.

 

^^ what he said. There's usually limits to a generic roadside assistance program.

BTW, Aussie models are fitted with a spacesaver spare. Of course, most of us take them out to save weight and liberate more boot space.

 

in case you didnt know wheter you use aaa or mazda or anyone else the same truck comes .. i was waiting in WI for 5 or 6 hrs when i could just call couple of truckers out of yellow pages and check if they're part of the program and have them there in 10 mins

anyways . lesson learned .. they always call a flatbed so one set of wheels isnt on the road .. just complicates things .. make sure you tell any tow is good and have them give you numbers of local tow services in the area .. then call em directly so they take the ticket right away .. rather than wait for someone to assign it

but yeah all in all the service sucks

 

Roadside assistance for any manufacturer that I am aware of will only take the car to the nearest dealer. Yes, it is frequently inconvenient, but it's also a free service.

Plus, Mazda is not going to take your car any place where is has no control over what happens next. For example, if they took you to the nearest tire shop and your car was stolen, you could have a legal claim against Mazda for negligent entrustment of your vehicle. No manufacturer is going to take that chance.

 

As mention sorry man but that isn't just Mazda that is the program. Though I thought if they took it to a dealer that was closed that they would pay for either a rental if part of you warrenty or least a ride home within reason.

Want a worst story? Friend years ago Chevy truck snap its driveshaft about 2 hrs from home. He called and they sent a tow truck in about 2 hrs which wasn't to bad I guess. BUT! Per his roadside assistance and warrenty they had to tow it to the dealership that it was purchased at. Worst? The tow truck drive didn't know where it was. So we had to drive 2 hrs back the wrong direction to show the tow truck driver where the dealership was and then drive 2 hrs back to where we were staying, despite there being a Chevy dealership not 30 minutes away.

Gah.

btw if you want you can purchase the spare tire from mazda, I got one with mine and even though it takes up a good amount of trunk space it can be useful. I mostly put it in when going on long trips or anywhere out of my area.

 

another idea is to get towing insurance with your auto insurance. I have State Farm and it costs me $2 per year. In your situation, you could have called a tow service of your choice and had your car towed to your house, and then you would have been reimbursed by your car insurance company.

 

It was the fact that Mazda didn't care about my problem and basically told me "sucks for you."

 

As was said, this was not really a roadside assistance issue. I can only relate my own experience. I flooded mine (yeah, I know) and called raodside assitance. They said they would have somebody here in less than 60 minutes and would take me & the car to the nearest Mazda dealer (they suck, but that's a different problem.) The guy showed up with a flatbed in less than 60 minutes and he was ready to go. I tried it one more time before we loaded up, and it started!

He asked me if I wanted to go anyway, but I said no thanks, it's running and they suck anyway. Thanked him for coming out and all was well. YMMV

 

I have on experience with mazda roadside and they were fantastic, within 1 hr of my call i had a truck there (flatbed) on the car and to the dealer, it was a perfect transaction.

 

me aswell :

my car stalled out on the way home (it was an on going problem, so I was already pissed that it was happening again). I called mazda road side, they took down my information and said they were sending out a flatbed. Within 15 mins I get a call from the tow truck company, they said they had a truck in route and it would be about 45min-1hr. About 20 mins later a regular tow truck shows up.

At first I was upset cause every single time I have called a tow truck for any car I have needed to get towed, I request a flatbed and they always send a regular truck, so when that guy shows up and says "you need a flatbed" he calls it in and I get put BACK In line for a flatbed, so it ends up taking even longer.

To my suprise, he tells me that the flatbed is still on the way, but he was driving by the location, and wanted to make sure everything was alright and that it wasnt anything he could help with (like a flat tire, jump start, out of gas, ect) we talked for a few mins. I was impressed by this service. About 20 more mins went by.....it had now been about 1hr since I called, and the flat bed showed up and got the car and took it away.

I was suprised it only took 1hr since it was 5 o'clock traffic.

I know that mazda only dispatches the calls to a town company they have a contract with (AAA in my area) and AAA just dispatches the call to their tow company in the area.....so in reality I was impressed with the tow companys service. I have used mazda (and the same tow company came out) 2 times since then, and the service has always been great.

Depending on the tow company that actualy comes out to the call, that is what causes the delays....if they are busy with people paying out of pocket for a tow, they take those first, since the AAA/Roadside service contracts pay less per tow.

 

When i had to get MRA, it was a saturday afternoon. The guy who picked me up was really cool, only had to wait about 1/2 hour. he towed me to the dealer, said his brother owned a local shop and if the dealer quoted too much, he'd take me over there, so that's what he did, then said if he didn't like the shop, he'd tow me back to the dealer for free. But the girl i talked to on the phone wasn't all that knowledgeable. You'd think they'd a least train their people on their cars. She asked me if i had a spare, I told her the car doesn't come with one, and if i did, i wouldn't be talking to her. The ignorance of these people who are supposed to help is amazing.

 

Spare tire is an option/accessory for the rx8.

 

Wow not to bring this up but I just had to have my car towed. The tow truck driver had the front jacked up and didn't want to put the back wheels on the dolley's. When I asked him to do it, he asked me why. I showed him the car manual which says that "Don't tow the vehicle pointed foward with driving wheels on the ground. This may cause internal damage to the transmission." He scratched his head and then suggested that he tow the car out into the court and then move the truck around and lift the rear up. Sometimes there is not much one can say...

 

cleoent - I know the spare is an accessory. How many people actually have one though. If the car is sold without a spare standard, it should be assumed that there is no spare.

 

Well I guess to find out you'd have to ask wouldn't you? I think her question was warranted, and instead of sending out a flatbed trailer, if you had a spare she could just send a regular truck and have the guy change it for you.

 

True dat!!