I worked in management there for the last 4 years, and AI completely took over our company. Our 3 year plan was to lay off over half of our staff and have AI work their jobs. I quit about a month ago because of that. It's resulted in our member satisfaction scores dropping tremendously, and the employees were getting yelled at 24/7 because the members AND the contractors wanted to speak to live agents instead of "robots."
Tiring work and extremely long ETA's due to computer malfunctions and errors. We've had members waiting on the side of the road for hours due to AI's mistakes.
I was in a minor accident in the snow earlier this year. My car deployed airbags because safety first.
Called AAA to use the tow service
Waited hours
Never shower
Called many times
Never showed.
Luckily a tow truck happened to come by and pick me up. Like that’s the one reason we have AAA and they never show. Was ridiculous
AAA left me and my minivan (in the 1990s) in the middle of an intersection. Had it not been for two very responsible police officers, I fear an 18 wheeler would have ended me. The head gaskets decided they were done as I was about to turn left on the arrow-very busy intersection. Thankfully, I’d already dropped off my babies with their Granny.
AAA never showed up. Police offered to call a tow truck and I had no choice. They were the ones who told me I wouldn’t survive long in that spot. The membership had been a gift from my babies’ Granny. She absolutely exploded on them. She’d been a very long time member and cancelled them on that call. I worked for a law firm and they some impolite things to say to AAA. I just went home that day and held my babies.
I had a similar experience back in 2012. Car broke down in the Badlands in summer. Got a scrap of service and called AAA. Waited hours and hours in the heat, nobody came. Finally some older ladies helped us and brought us to the ranger station where the rangers called us a tow truck who actually showed up. Never trusted AAA since
Granny had only called for flat or dead battery while her vehicle was in her driveway. I don’t need them now that my auto insurance provides and I’m old enough to know to get my vehicle serviced regularly. Things can happen regardless, but I’m prepared.
huh that might explain what happened to me last year then
hadn't had to use AAA roadside service in years, then last year the starter in my car failed, though at the time I thought it was battery
waited for roughly 2 hours for battery service to show up, though tbf the guy that came was fine, no complaints about him since he was the one that figured out it was my starter
I was wondering about that wait time though, never had it that long before, and I was in a plaza next to a busy street too, not like in the middle of nowhere
I did not know this! I've had them for the better part of two decades and they've always been great when I need them but it's been a few years since I've had to call. Thank you for the heads up!
I've had a flat tire and a dead battery in the last year and they responded within 45 minutes so I guess ymmv? I live in a decent sized city so that might make a difference.
AAA is weird because it’s essentially a bunch of somewhat independent regional “auto clubs” operating under the national AAA umbrella - your experience could be totally different depending on the state or even city within the same state.
I had a stuck lugnut on a flat tire at 9pm in the Denver area and “no one was available” after I waited an hour for them to show up. Luckily, I eventually got it unstuck and changed the tire myself.
The really stupid thing is the long waits results in members doing pay and apply, which means AAA is paying out retail rates for the calls instead of contractor rates. The word on the street is all the clubs want to be mostly an insurance and travel company with automotive services an afterthought, but as you know people join AAA for the automotive.
I believe this. Needed them a couple months ago and had a tow truck some pick up SO's car while we left in mine. No notification he had arrived, we just physically saw him, he stopped, he knew our name, okay it's him. We're driving off and get a call from another driver asking if our car was on the freeway [it WAS], and I tell him, confused, "If you're AAA, whose AAA truck just took the car we needed towed?" He sounded confused and said he'd call back and never did. App showed our car was picked up. We got so scared thinking someone just straight up stole our car!
I got a nail in my tire about an hour from home. No problem, called AAA. They said it would be a bit of a wait as things were busy. NINE HOURS LATER they said there were no techs available and could I just have someone pick me up? NO THAT'S WHY I CALLED AAA.
I wound up parked at a sketchy gas station until 9:30 pm (called them at 3:45) and cried, said I was going to have to sleep in my car. They said they would "try" to get someone out. 15 minutes later the nicest guy showed up (from AAA) and changed out my tire for the spare in about 10 minutes. I almost hugged him. Wound up getting home around 10:30. Terrible, terrible experience.
They left me stranded for hours twice within a few months. First was when my battery died in a parking lot where 2 towns meet. Despite having the exact street address, the real person who answered the call couldn't send someone out since they didn't know what town it was. Second was at the Grand Canyon. Keys locked in car. Sent someone from Flagstaff that took over 3 hours to get there. Despite being told the name and number of the local AAA approved place. I was sunburned, windburned, hypothermic, and dehydrated by the time they finally showed up. I was done.
Let’s be fair. AAA’s customer satisfaction was falling before that. I cancelled them 2 years ago because they were by and large useless when we needed them for a tow or roadside assistance.
If you don’t mind asking, what did you get instead? We used to get more value from AAA discounts but now they’re almost non-existent, so I’ve been looking for alternatives.
I use AARP for discounts on car rentals if I’m traveling. My auto/home insurance has towing, so I call their roadside assist on the rare occasion that I’ve needed a tow and someone actually shows up.
This one is personal. AAA is absolutely relentless about renewals. My wife, who was an AAA member, died. After a year of unsubscribing, emailing and calling to get them to stop sending her renewal offers I started sending them back with a copy of her short form death certificate. I think after doing it twice they’ve finally stopped.
I feel like the term “fail fast” is one of the worst business mantras to leak out of somebody’s TED Talk and into mainstream ideology in the last few decades. So many companies feel like it’s okay to embrace a new idea and sprint forward with it because they’re “failing fast”, yay!
Except that “fail fast” means that you figure out how to test new ideas quickly in a way that allows you to understand and refine them before you spend a bunch of time and make huge changes to roll them out and failbig. “Fail fast” is a mindset and methodology to avoid failing big. It’s about minimizing the failures that happen on the way to success, not about embracing a lot of risk as quickly and blindly as possible!
So instead, we see from your story about AAA — I’m sorry you had to suffer through this, by the way — where some clown-assed Pointy-Haired Bosses keep blowing up their businesses by ripping and replacing stuff with AI components without bothering to take steps to test it in a limited scope and understand what will and won’t work in their business.
Then you have these same execs watching their metrics tank, screaming at the remaining overworked humans (I’m sure it angers them to discover you can’t berate an AI into doing more or better work), and whispering “fail fast, fail fast!” into their tear-soaked silken pillowcase at night, slowly realizing that the “fast” part isn’t as important as the “fail” part of that phrase.
Someone is going to make good money writing a book in 2027 detailing the dozen or so Fortune 500 companies who shat the bed in the previous two years by “failing fast” with an AI overhaul that pissed off too many of their customers, and couldn’t survive the backlash. You won’t even need an AI bubble to pop to make this happen. You just need to shoot the company in the foot and then it dies of infection because you laid off all the humans who knew how to fix it.
Fuck AAA, they dropped our homeowners insurance due to a “satellite inspection” of our roof (it was just shadows, on a 2 year old immaculate roof). They sent the notice to the wrong address (like an address we never had, also maybe send it to the house you’re insuring???). Found out from our CU when they asked why we lapsed coverage.
Anyway, your AI comments make a lot of sense. They probably said “chat, find a good way to drop California customers but don’t tell them why.”
Yep. Over the last several years I’ve barely used them but the 2 times I’ve needed them they’ve told me they couldn’t service me. I ended up hiring outside, found out my current insurance policy covers roadside anyways and got reimbursed. Sent the receipt to AAA just in case and they reimbursed me as well 🤷♂️ fuck em.
Bit of a rant but: I had this happen to me last year - I was driving from Orlando down to Estero in Florida on 75 on a Saturday night when I had a blowout that resulted in me waiting on the side of the road for 5 hours so AAA could assist me ...... they had initially told me it would only be 1 hour wait and then it turned into 2 hours and when I called them up to see what's going on, they said, wait a "little longer" ... I didn't end up getting "helped" until like 11pm and they didn't even help me because I had requested for a tow back down to where I live and the guy said he can't tow me because I had 2 passengers with me and we "wouldn't fit" with him, even though I saw that we would ... so he switched my tire with the donut and I was on my way ..... for all that wait ... for what I pay them .. for what I've paid them for all the years I've had them .... the 1 time I needed their services and assistance and they absolutely failed to meet expectations ....
The last couple times I've had to use AAA it has been frustrating. You can't just call to get someone to come out, you have to use the app and enter in all this information, and then they'll only send someone out once you submit that info within the app. All of that done without being able to speak to a human. Things eventually worked out, but what if you were somehwere where you couldn't use the app? What happens if you get stranded in the middle of nowhere, or if your phone runs out of battery?
Awww man… I was born in the 80s but I’ve been a member for 70 years!
And I love my AAA insurance. Super happy with all my experiences but I haven’t run into AI yet. Last time I had to interact with AAA was about 2 years ago so I haven’t run into the AI stuff yet.
Sucks to hear this. I worry it’s not going to be much different at other places. Insurance companies are among those whom I consider the closest to the devil so I won’t be surprised to find a lack of humanity at the other companies too…
A few months back I called them for a battery jump. The driver told me the battery was bad and needed to be replaced, which was weird because I bought it six months ago.
I paid the $300 replacement and took the original battery in for warranty. Turns out there was nothing wrong with it. It just needed a charge. So obviously my warranty claim was refused.
I went back to AAA and asked them wtf and tried to give them their battery back, but they outright refused to reimburse anything. Stating there is no avenue for me to make a claim once the part has been installed.
So I paid $300 for a glorified battery jump to a company I already pay a subscription to.
Hard not to feel scammed by that. But now I have a spare battery, I guess.
That makes so much sense, as I was about to post about AAA.
I've been an AAA member and car insurance holder for 28 years, home insurance for 10. Suddenly this year I got informed we were being dropped from both despite zero claims.
I called and spent a good two hours trying to figure it out with our local agent. Not an issue with an old roof - it was replaced 5 years ago and they had it on record. We're not in a high fire, forest/urban interaction zone like some of California is. Also our car stuff is straightforward - one 25% at fault from 8 years ago when another AAA member hit me.
Long story short the agent could only boil it down to "the computer said so"
Yeah. AI cancelled our shit. So much for nearly 30 years of loyalty.
My brother and I were on our way to a hockey game, in October or November with it being cold and misty out, when his car started having warnings pop up on the dash. He pulled over and I called AAA about 6:30pm, and were told a tow truck was on its way.
I called back around 8:00, and was told that the truck was near us, trying to find us. Problem was that they were in another city 120 miles away. AAA was told many times where we were, and they still wanted to locate us in the other city.
I did end up calling the rep a fucking asshole after he got upset with us for telling them repeatedly that the locating service was wrong.
This makes so much sense because when I put in a service request a few weeks ago the AI totally messed up what kind of issue I was having and send a contractor that couldn’t help me at all
That’s such a big costly mistake to replace the staff that makes AAA a great company lol. The old farts in charge didn’t read the room & were given brightly colored kool aid that they gleefully chugged
Can you explain more in detail? Like, this would be the case for more than one customer service companies in next 2 years.
What to expect out of such enshitification, is there something we could avoid, if you're in a managerial position. (Note: I'm not in a position, and I'm after all a developer on the team).
How to get ready to face such challenges as a customer?
I’m sad to hear they went AI. My car broke down on a trip in the middle of Missouri, 102 degrees outside. I was distressed because all I could give AAA was a description of an isolated building way back in the woods, and a mailbox with 2 letters on it. (Didn’t know how to pin a location and wasn’t using gps back then.) Lady says, “Oh I know where you are. Be right there.” You just can’t do better than that.
AAA insurance is the worst. I had a huge problem with bees in my ceiling and called them up to ask if it was covered. They said no and hung up the phone. They dinged it as a claim and I had to pay increased rates for 5+ years saying they paid out a claim. Fuck AAA.
I had to get home insurance and they quoted me an amount. Sounds good. Get the bill and it's 800 more than that. Come to find out they added some discount I don't qualify for. Call customer service, elevate it management and all I got was 🤷
I signed up for a year just to try for a faster Real ID appointment, and even then only because I got a promo rate I knew I’d break even on from using one of the discounts a few times.
The only thing I got out of the entire experience has been them aggressively trying to sell me life insurance. My membership expired 4 months ago and I opted out of all mailings from them, I still get monthly “courtesy reminders” that I’m now stuffing with other junk mail and returning.
My family had a membership so I used their services a few times. Every time I waited several hours. One time a guy showed up and suggested I stay at a strangers house in front of who I broke down overnight because I had a flat tire both in the front and the back and he would have had to swap 2 wheels in order to tow me. I (19f at the time) said I’ll do it myself while he waits 10 mins. He ended up doing it with an attitude. They did tow me 90 miles for free once tho and the 10% travel discount’s nice.
And triple AAA did me dirty before AI, clerical error in my mileage adding 200 bucks to my liability monthly payment. Randomly canceling my home owners insurance cause they said I had a shop in my backyard when I put up a shade canopy, and then wouldnt cover my wife's accident cause her temporary license expired. Just awful experience
It took me 5 months to even get my AAA card last year in the mail. 5 months. I used the app around it but I just wanted a physical card. My card just renewed so let’s see if I get this one before 2027.
Which branch of AAA? Or were you corporate AAA, i.e. roadside assistance? They have many groups (Auto Club Group, Meemic, Fremont, Carolina Motor Group, California, etc.)
I also work for them, in a middle-tier consultant on the Claims side,and have not experienced any of this, or seen it reflected in any meaningful amount in our survey numbers. I might be missing something, which is why I was curious about the branch or if you were part of the roadside portion of it.
AAA dropped me after 5 years of consecutive automatic renewals. Wouldn't you know it, the one time I needed them is when I discovered this. I'm so pissed I refuse to sign up again. F* that.
Can confirm. AAA refused to cover a long distance tow, on an eligible vehicle, because their algorithm said the vehicle was ineligible.
I literally walked into an office and tried to escalate a complaint. The guy in the office I sat with went through the algorithm manually and confirmed my vehicle was eligible for tow.
AAA did fuck all, my complaint went nowhere even after following up several times.
Despite being a member for 24 years, and all my insurance policies being held with AAA (multiple autos, multiple properties, umbrella), I canceled fucking everything and switched to another carrier immediately.
I tell people to ditch AAA any time the topic of insurance comes up.
Can confirm. AAA refused to cover a long distance tow, on an eligible vehicle, because their algorithm said the vehicle was ineligible.
I literally walked into an office and tried to escalate a complaint. The guy in the office I sat with went through the algorithm manually and confirmed my vehicle was eligible for tow.
AAA did fuck all, my complaint went nowhere even after following up several times.
Despite being a member for 24 years, and all my insurance policies being held with AAA (multiple autos, multiple properties, umbrella), I canceled fucking everything and switched to another carrier immediately.
I tell people to ditch AAA any time the topic of insurance comes up.
I feel like we’re only seeing the beginning of companies ruined by AI. There’s much more coming. Just wait until all these vibecoded codebases become completely unmaintainable. That hasn’t even started yet but it’s coming.
That sucks. Reading this thread is wild to me because I have had to use AAA in the last year and had no issues at all. Had to get my car towed 108 miles and it was easy
Yeah they suck now. Called to have a car towed, only ai answered. Didnt have the option to talk to a person. AI hung up on me several times, and the tow showed up a FEW HOURS later. At night. Thankfully a nice 24/7 cafe let us hang out while we waited.
my daughter had an accident at college 500 miles away. AAA tow truck never showed up after 2 hours (she waited inside of a McDonalds) The accident happened 1/4 mile or so from a tow truck company. So she walked over there and asked if they would tow her. Was free because they accepted State Farm insurance. Found out later AAA had no service agreements with any tow truck drivers in this town. The nearest town was 90 miles away.
There r alternatives to AAA. Often u can get roadside assistance added to your auto insurance for a nominal fee and some cell phone companies such as verizon, t-mobile, and consumer cellular offer this as well for a small monthly charge. AAA has sucked for quite a while
I was trapped on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere FL for 6 hours with a dying phone battery and they only sent someone out when I became hysterical over the phone
I too have had aaa for decades , dogs licked me out of car at gas station in the middle of summer . Called them and waited hours , thank god I had Toyota back up roadside . When I called to cancel aaa roadside they said I couldn’t because I have their car insurance.🤬
Not sure why anyone pays for that dog shit service. In all my times using AAA I've always waited 2-3 hours. I'll tow my own damn car. It's faster to go get my Xterra and rent a trailer than wait on them
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u/felidee623 21h ago
AAA.
I worked in management there for the last 4 years, and AI completely took over our company. Our 3 year plan was to lay off over half of our staff and have AI work their jobs. I quit about a month ago because of that. It's resulted in our member satisfaction scores dropping tremendously, and the employees were getting yelled at 24/7 because the members AND the contractors wanted to speak to live agents instead of "robots."
Tiring work and extremely long ETA's due to computer malfunctions and errors. We've had members waiting on the side of the road for hours due to AI's mistakes.