After being forced to wait seven hours on the side of a dual carriageway as she “cried” and “pleaded” for the RAC to arrive, a grandmother suffering from cancer wet herself.
After a tyre on Jen Rooke’s Audi Q3 blew, she was left stranded on the side of the road without water and unable to take her painkillers.
Two hours after her first contact, she informed the RAC that she needed to take cancer medicine, but they just apologized and did nothing to expedite her rescue.
Ms. Rooke was left waiting alone in a late-night garage when the rescue crew finally arrived at 9 o’clock to have her tire changed rather than having the RAC repair it on the side of the road.
The grandmother paid $231 annually for the RAC’s “peace of mind” protection, which covers roadside tyre repair, but the seven-hour wait still occurred.
She said that she was in tears since she required her medicine following her upsetting experience. I was in a lot of discomfort since I had ovarian cancer.
“I called back and began crying and begging with them.”
Ms. Rooke says she had to battle the RAC to get her money back after having to pay an additional £138 for a new tire in the middle of the night.
The RAC later gave Ms. Rooke £100 as payment for the prolonged delay, but only after the grandmother objected when they were first given an offer of £50.
She had visited her two boys in Clapham, south London, and was making the approximately six-hour trip home to Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
Because of her disease, she enjoys spending a lot of time with her kids and believes she should “go on and enjoy yourself.”
Ms. Rooke said that she did not let her son see her because of the condition she was in because she could not bear to make the six-hour trip back home. Instead, she went back to her son’s residence.
On August 17, at about 2.50 pm, when she was leaving London, one of her tires exploded on the A4.
Ms. Rooke was informed that there would be a 90 minute wait when she first talked to the RAC team, despite the fact that she had not mentioned her cancer on the first call.
However, she received no meaningful update on how long it would take when she was obliged to call again after two hours to inquire on their whereabouts.
The elderly lady then informed the RAC that she had cancer and was unable to take her medicine by the side of the road since she had no food or drink to help her digest it.
Ms. Rooke called them a third time to beg them to listen, but she was still made to wait.
In September of that year, after having a 12-hour procedure to save her life, she began chemotherapy after receiving her first diagnosis of ovarian cancer.
Sadly, her cancer came back in June of this year, and the doctors placed her on hormone therapy to shrink it, which is why she has to take painkillers.
In the next weeks, she will begin a new round of chemotherapy.
The driving adventure became worse when the former farmer realized her phone’s battery was getting low and wanted to use the restroom after waiting for so long.
Despite being in agony, Ms. Rooke abandoned her vehicle in the lay-by on the dual carriageway and made her way to a neighboring housing estate in search of a restroom.
She ended up wetting herself since the locals were reluctant to allow her inside their homes.
My bladder isn’t great since I had cancer, the grandma stated.
It was very awful. I never imagined myself in such circumstance.
Since I have cancer, I often visit my children in London; you are advised to go on and have fun.
Seven hours later, someone finally arrived, but it wasn’t an official RAC vehicle, and the technician who was there informed her that he couldn’t change her tire.
At this moment, Ms. Rooke’s phone had died, making it impossible for her to contact her children.
She was offered the choice of going to a late-night garage they were about to pass or to South Mimms, a hamlet north of London, to wait for an official RAC vehicle.
Ms. Rooke’s precarious situation was made worse by the fact that she was waiting alone at a garage in the middle of the night.
After the terrible night, she had to pay for the price of the new tire and returned to her son’s home.
I was too sick to get back to Harrogate, she added.
Especially given how I was feeling at the time, I just couldn’t believe what they had made me go through. My kid wasn’t allowed to see me in that way.
“I paid $231 for peace of mind protection, but they weren’t interested,” the customer said.
The fact that I was ill or that I had been waiting for seven hours didn’t seem to worry them. It was very sad.
The automatic doors on Ms. Rooke’s automobile had been tampered with and wouldn’t open the next morning.
Ms. Rooke must enter her vehicle via the trunk since the RAC has accepted “no responsibility” for the car doors.
She received a £1,600 price from an Audi shop to repair the doors.
We’re really sorry we couldn’t get there sooner, a RAC spokeswoman stated.
‘Unfortunately, it took us a few hours after she initially contacted us to learn that she had cancer and needed to take treatment.
We would have given her priority for a speedier arrival if we had known this sooner.
“We’ve paid her back for the replacement tyre and given her a gesture of good will to make up for her experience, which wasn’t up to our usual exceptional service owing to the unusually high number of breakdowns we were dealing with in the hot weather,” the company said.