Driving the roads in the Prairie Provinces can be treacherous – especially when these roads experience winter for seven months of the year. I take long drives from Winnipeg to Saskatoon, which is around 800 km, and there are very few places to take shelter in case something ever were to happen to your car. Everyone I know seems to have CAA, so I thought I would try it for a year.
I made the decision to join CAA when I started to make the journey to see my girlfriend in the beginning of February. It was around –40 degrees Celsius outside – not including the wind-chill. I pulled over after driving 200 km into a town and thought about that “48-hour window” CAA had in order for your vehicle to get towed (which translates to “You can’t get towed until 48 hours after your membership purchase”). Seeing how I had 56 hours until I made the trip back again, I signed up for CAA from my phone. I wasn’t covered on my way there, but at least I had peace of mind on my way back. I didn’t fully discover the benefits until I got my membership package in the mail.
Types of Membership
Take-Home Features
The Emergency Road Side Assistance is the best feature they have and you can call them up to four times per membership year (charges apply for additional calls). Their mobile app even has a giant red button that takes up most of the screen to press in the event you need them. You can also get battery boosts, spare-tire changes, and fuel-delivery service. Another nice feature is that they will come and help you get into your car in case you lock your keys inside. Before you start laughing, remember it happens to everyone eventually; I’ve been told it happens more when you have kids.
Having a CAA membership also gives you access to all sorts of discounts, which vary by province. The main ones are car rentals, fuel, satellite-radio subscriptions, and hotels. If you are a frequent traveller needing all of those then these savings can really add up since most discounts are around 10%.
Not Just Automotive Coverage
CAA also has all kinds of insurance that I wasn’t aware of when I initially signed up. These will vary by province, I bet; but the ones I found are:
- Home & Property Insurance
- Travel Health
- Health and Dental
- Life Insurance
- Critical Illness
- Personal Accident
- Travel/Trip Accident
- Home Safety
- And again – locksmith service
For almost all of these, they recommend going in to talk to someone to get a personalised quote because there is no “one size fits all” package. I’m not at the life stage where I need excessive amounts of insurance, since I don’t have a family to worry about. I also don’t have any loyalty to my current insurance broker; they just happened to be in the same parking lot as the liquor store.
Why Worry? I Have CAA!
The peace of mind alone is well worth the 31¢ a day that the $113 annual membership fee boils down to. Whenever I travel, I know I’ll have someone to call to bail me out, anywhere in North America! I should also add that this coverage follows me around, not my car. If I’m with a friend and their car breaks down, I can use my coverage to help them out. If I didn’t have this service and had car trouble, I would surely be kicking myself, especially if it’s -40.
Readers – What are your thoughts? Do you have CAA? Do you use them for all of your insurance needs?
Their office is closer to us than any other registry office. It’s useful for driver abstracts, wedding licences and certificates, renewing a licence, etc.
The wife used to get CAA insurance for the car but it ended up getting too costly year after year and she never had any claims. She ended up going through her professional association and got a great rate she couldn’t refuse and has been with them for almost 10 years now. We do still have CAA road coverage though but at $74 a pop we are still considering cancelling since we haven’t used the service and have had it for many years. I guess you pay for peace of mind but I think if they have a customer that… Read more »
Thats a good point about the customer discount. Manitoba Public Insurance (they have the monopoly on car insurance, government run) gives good drivers a break on their insurance and their licence depending how many merits they have. I think you can get a 20% discount in the highest bracket. If CAA did something like this it sure would help things.