Broken down ?

Submitted: Saturday, Jun 12, 2010 at 18:39
ThreadID: 79276 Views:4471 Replies:6 FollowUps:6
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Hi All,

Another tourism season is upon us and once again I'd like to give anyone who may be interested a good tip.
Most of you will know what I'm about to go over but many clearly don't as we have this happen repeatedly to us. Three times so far this season in fact.

You break down, you have no sat phone. Along comes another vehicle so you send a message to the nearest place that may be able to help ie Drysdale.

The verbal message we get is for example ' The wheel fell off ' You then ask the person delivering the message where the breakdown is. 'Oh they are up near Doongan' That is about 40 km from us, by the way.

So here we are ready and able to send the mechanic up to help BUT we don't know the depth of the problem, we don't know the make, year & model of the vehicle, in fact we don't know anything very useful at all !!!!!!
We don't even have a written note asking to send help so it's a big gamble if we will even get paid or not.
We have in fact in the past driven 200 km to rescue a vehicle to get there and be told they no longer need our help and have no intention of paying for the travel time.

It is imperative that you send a written note saying.
Please send help. We will pay all costs.
(A credit card number is even better and many places will no longer move to help without one)
Exactly where you are.
Exactly what has happened to your vehicle, describe the problem as fully as possible.
FULL details of the vehicle, make, year , month, model .......... anything that may help. Exactly what size tryes etc if that is the problem, is it 5 or 6 stud .
If anyone is hurt or if you need anything ie water.

Telling us the wheel fell of is almost useless ie have you lost one nut or all of them, did it strip the stud threads when it came adrift , or damage the rim etc etc.
Did you get the tyre back and is it re usable, or do you have spares?

Once we know some detail we might have some idea what to take along to be able to help.

Because we feel sorry for people in trouble one of our blokes has just driven off on a verbal request to do a save job, he has no useful info at all regarding the job, doesn't even know what the vehicle is, therefore he has no idea what he needed to take along with him.

Each year we get burned trusting minute verbal messages. Sometimes by the time we get there another helpful traveler has come along and fixed the problem and the vehicle we went to help isn't even there anymore. The mechanic then drives an extra 20 km up the road in case the distance we were given was incorrect.

Even if you know all this please tell all your less experienced mates heading for the bush. Doing it the right way will save us all a lot of time and money, including the customer if we take all we need the first time.
We have gone to do a trailer repair job to find the tow bar had in fact totally come adrift from the trailer , totally in 2 bits, of course we should have in fact taken the welder. This didn't rate a mention when we were asked to go.
Takes a lot of time to load the welder and all that gear so we only cart it along if needed.

We realise not everyone can tell us the exact problem and we do cater for that but it really does need to be more than just the ' wheel fell off '
Thanks for your help in getting the message out !

We want to help, we just need the customers help to be able to do so !
Do I sound frustrated. Sorry but I am.
cheers, Anne



























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