AA Road Service: When You Need It Most & The Right Hand Has No Idea What the Left Hand Is Doing
Jordan Kelly • 8 September 2024

From Insurance to Road Service, the NZ Automobile Association Is A Joke

 I almost can't be bothered writing this latest account of the AA, its customer service standards and its general performance. From their insurance call centre wallies to their road service call-out operators, they're a bloody joke. And I've written not one, but TWO earlier reviews to unfortunately prove it.


Last Tuesday night, my car was broken into. To say that I was in a stressful, vulnerable situation, late on a dark, wet and windy night, hours from my home, with no money (thanks to the thieves in which the Police had nil interest), no window in my driver's side, no mobile phone, and all alone with my little dog . . . that and more, would make "stressful" a study in the art of the understatement.


I used my wonderful new-found friend's mobile phone to call the AA for road service. The first operator tells me that they "only help with mechanical and structural issues", and that despite the fact I've been a subscriber my entire life, and to their Premium "service", he's happy to see me drive home across the RImutaka Ranges with no window, in the dead of night, in a galing wind, with rain pouring in,, and with my ass parked in a bed of broken glass.


However, I decided to try back and get a second operator. Glad I did. The first operator didn't know his ass from his elbow, apparently.. The second operator advised that of course they provide either glass replacement during business hours, or temporary glass replacement after hours. They wouldn't allow a service subscriber to get back on the road with no window! Nor, he said, would they allow me to sit in shards of broken glass, and he'd ensure the mechanic came out with something to clean it up with.


The former happened (i.e. a plastic window to get me home) but not the clean-up for safety assistance.


The other issue is, I was belatedly advised by another AA service subscriber and policy holder, that I should have been given a rental car to get home in. Of course, the AA never bothered to tell me that.


Unfortunately, This Useless Crowd Are Also My Insurers


Next, I try for better luck re the fact that they're also my insurer.


While on the phone to said insurance call centre, I realise that the spare keys to both my vehicles are in my wallet, as is my address book (showing my address), all of which are now in the possession of the thief or thieves.


I tell her so.. She tells me that "you can get new ones cut as part of your claim, so that will trigger your $500 excess then". I point out that the AA would be making a tidy profit from me, for the cutting of two keys.


I also try to clarify with her whether she means that that the cutting of two new keys should involve changing something in the ignition so that said thieves can't just rock up and drive both my vehicles away at their leisure.


'I SAID, GET A QUOTE!', the Call Centre Girl Instructs Me in Her Most Authoritarian 18-Year-Old Voice


But she - in all her youthful arrogance - is not about to let me speak. Mustering her best 18-year-old-sounding voice of authority, she berates me:  "I. SAID. GET. A. QUOTE." 


Being that I was STILL none the wiser as to precisely what I SHOULD be getting a quote for vs what she was instructing me to get a quote for, I suggested she might let me speak and listen to my need for clarification. But she wasn't about to do that. She simply hung up.


Someone at AA must have become aware of the abortive call, coupled with my previous two reviews of them on The Customer & The Constituent (here and here) . . . because several days later, they swung into damage control and I received a call from someone who organised the collection of my vehicle by the glass repairer and its prompt return. (I actually haven't stepped outside yet to check the work and the nature of the replacement glass, but will be doing so tomorrow. Watch this space, if necessary.)



Other News, Reviews & Commentary

by Jordan Kelly 15 March 2026
Editor’s Conclusion : Unqualified. Unsupervised. Unaccountable. And Still Accredited.
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by Jordan Kelly 4 March 2026
Time for Change : New Zealand's Pet Parents Say NO MORE to the Poor Standards, Compromised Care & Outright Contempt We Put Up With from the 'Products' of the Massey Veterinary Degree Factory
by Jordan Kelly 27 February 2026
Readers following the coverage of my attempts to get to the bottom of what happened to my beloved little papillon, Harry, with whom I was extraordinarily closely bonded, will know that: (A) The rot in Massey University’s Companion Animal “Hospital” (CAH) runs deep. (B) Honesty and transparency is not their policy. Denial, dismissal, stonewalling, legal threats and intimidation are. (C) Animals aren’t safe there, with cruelty embedded in “care”, and your property (as your pet legally is) not considered your property at all, as far as Massey, its CAH staff and management are concerned. Your pet is theirs ; to do with as they please, according to their mindset and their modus operandi. And if that involves catastrophic levels of unauthorised, contraindicated, convenience sedation to facilitate their use of your pet in monetised student video collections (including on private cell phones, and to which you will be given no access), this too, according to Massey, is its own God-given right and “best practice” Standard Operating Procedure. (D) “Informed Consent” has a very different meaning in the Massey playbook to that which is generally deemed its accepted definition. (E) “Accountability” is a foreign concept and not one with which they have any intention of becoming acquainted. (F) Laws – including those governing animal welfare, property conversion and more – are not only optional, in Massey’s case, they simply don’t apply. In fact, they appear blissfully ignorant of them according to my (and Harry's) experience. You know all that. You’ve read about it here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here and in most of my other now 30+ articles covering the numerous different sub-atrocities within the overall atrocity that was the demise and disposal of my precious little Harry. Actually, "atrocious" doesn't come anywhere near to being an adequate adjective. Despite having been a professional writer since I was 16 and having upwards of 25 published books under my belt, I don't actually have an adjective that's adequate for the pure evil that was perpetrated upon Harry . . . and, by extension, me . There is not one word or one phrase that can sufficiently convey the depth and breadth of the sheer, unadulterated wickedness that festers without restraint within the walls of Massey University's Companion Animal "Hospital". What you, my readers (or those of you not on Massey's massive legal team payroll) didn’t yet know – because I didn’t yet know – is that record and evidence tampering (which, for any other New Zealand citizen would attract jail time of up to 10 years under the Crimes Act 1961 Section 258 (Altering document with intent to deceive) or Section 260 (Falsifying registers) , and/or a $10,000 fine under the Privacy Act Section 212(2)(b) - appears also to be included in the “we’re exempt” culture of Massey and its veterinary “hospital” staff. Note to Readers: The above laws aren't some hypothetical, bottom-drawer, dusty old legal tracts in archaic library textbooks. They're real, "living" laws that apply to every individual in our country. And today, they are being made to apply to Dr Stephanie Rigg and her "colleagues" who falsified Harry's records to create a cover-up of what they did to him . . . and to me. I will, duly, see Dr Rigg and her associates in Court. Dissecting the Cover-Up: Massey’s Metadata of Deception But back to what readers do know for a moment: You’ll know that I’ve been in the battle of battles for the past two months to extract Harry’s full records (or anything approaching them) from Massey’s Legal and Governance department. HOWEVER . . . there was one thing I hadn’t known how to decipher that they actually had finally drip-fed to me. It was File Name: Patient Change Log (Field-Level Audit) . I’ve been learning a lot about veterinary science, record-keeping, and law in general lately. Not because I wanted to. But because if you want to figure out how deep the rot really runs at Massey, you kind of have to. So I’ve learned a bit about how to decipher clinical metadata. Just e nough to realise that this Patient Change Log (Field-Level Audit) is exactly where the digital fingerprints of a cover-up are hiding. Despite the fact that this document has as much redacted as it shows (probably more), with ALL staff names and positions blacked out, for example -I still found four distinct “smoking gun” entries in these otherwise heavily-redacted metadata logs. BIG. FAT. SMOKING. GUNS. that amounted to one undeniable overall conclusion: This document isn’t a clinical record so much as it’s a literal crime scene . There were already so many dodgy inconsistencies in the few items I'd managed to pull out of Massey to that point (as I've documented in various of my preceding articles). But this document is where, undeniably, the bodies are buried. You just need to know which clod of dirt to look under. Hidden in Plain Sight . . . In A Little Thing Called the Metadata (That the Average Pet Owner Wouldn't Even Know Existed ) There are four hidden but key findings demonstrating that the entire timeline of Harry’s “experience” in that hellhole were was orchestrated, and the sudden "neurological event/decline" exit strategy planned for him were a total fabrication. And that fabrication had a start time. (For this start time we will initially revert our focus back to Massey's previously-supplied "Clinical Summary" (in all its dodginess) . . . We will then lead from the immediately below into the afore-mentioned "Patient Change Log (Field-Level Audit)". Bear with me. I promise not to let this get boring). Well, one of two start times. Either: (1) The 8.38am disconnection of his (with, by-then, the TWO 750% overdoses of the renally contraindicated convenience sedative with which the "crying dog"-sensitive ICU staff had plied him overnight) now life-essential IV fluids (8.5 hours into the prescribed 24-hour protocol that they charged me for). And/or: (2) When the day shift ICU "vet" arrived at 9am and decided a THIRD 750% overdose would be a strategic way do deal with a clearly already massively overdosed little 3.8kg, 15-year-old, dehydrated dog. Now WHY would any vet take such a decision? Well, for legal purposes, of course (remembering that the Venerable Dean Jon Huxley and the obviously not- so-new-broom Vice-Chancellor Pierre Venter, have all the money in the public purse to pay their top-tier external legal counsel . . . and by gum, there are enough of the buggers, if this site's analytics are anything to be guided by), I will precede the following by stating that these are my conclusions, made on the basis of the collation and evaluation of the information before me. That said, what I know of my readers is this: You are no intellectual slouches. Feel free to let me know if you can come up with any other conclusion from the information (complete with now numerous "receipts") that I have thus far presented, most especially here and here , and most tellingly of all, in today's expose. R emember, though, I held the ultimate evidence in my arms at 6pm on December 1 . . . and, some 45 minutes later, I let them take it (safely, for them) away from me, just like Harry's (the literal body of evidence) life had just been taken from him. Little Numerals that Tell A BIG Story The plan for Harry's manufactured exit is not so much written into the records, as it is revealed by the tampering with the logs. They lay bare the lead vet’s apparent plan that his life would come to an abrupt end by the pre-scheduled time of (well, they couldn't quite get consistency in the logs regarding the exact minute, but by the absolute latest time of) 17:00 hours i.e. 5pm . . . assumedly, the end of the day shift on December 1. Just in time to mark him "Deceased" and seal off the records of this catastrophically overdosed patient, before the next shift came on, saw his records, and someone started asking the immediately necessary, and certainly appropriate, questions. And those questions would (0R SHOULD ) have included , but would certainly not have been limited to: How long has this dog been in this state? Why hasn't any rescue and remediation protocol been undertaken? Why was he given yet ANOTHER administration of 50mg of Gabapentin at 09:00 hours after the preceding two during night shift? Why is he disconnected from his IV fluids? Who approved that and why? (And if they knew he'd starred in a multi-video student film festival that morning): Was he taken out of his cage and handled in this state? When did he last drink? Was he given any food before he entered this near-comatose state? Does the owner know of the overdoses and the state he's in? Have you filled in an incident report? Have any emergency specialists been called in for advice? and, no doubt, many more questions. OR . . . maybe not. It depends if the rot in that ICU is fully immersive, or if it's concentrated on Dr Stephanie Rigg's day shift and the ICU shift staff of the preceding (November 30) night. But none of those questions could be asked and none of that could happen. The day shift - led by "Dr" Rigg ("Steffi") - wasn't about to let it happen. Thus, the pre-timestamped, just before end-of-shift, Time of Death entered into the "Euthanasia Authorisation" form that they had all queued up for me long before I ever arrived at that Godforsaken facility that fated December 1 afternoon.
by Jordan Kelly 17 February 2026
Harry WAS A Marked Dog. I Had Hoped Massey Vet Staff Couldn't Have Been Any More Wicked Than They'd Already Been Caught Out Being. But YES , Actually, They COULD . 
by Jordan Kelly 15 February 2026
This Is What Happens When Massey Thinks THEY Own Your Dog & Can Do With Him As They Please (You Just Pay the Invoice) At This Appalling, Unaccountable Veterinary House of Horrors (LATEST PROOF OF 'LAB RAT' TREATMENT HERE )
by Jordan Kelly 12 February 2026
FOR LATEST INVESTIGATION FINDINGS: GO HERE . My Precious Little Boy Died Needlessly, In Intense Physical, Mental & Emotional Agony . . . After Massive Overdosing, Intense Cruelty & Intentionally False Diagnosis by Massey 'Vet' (So Called) to Enable His 'Disposal' After Lab Rat-Style Experimentation
by Jordan Kelly 11 February 2026
While my focus is on the 750% overdosing of my precious little dog, Harry, with an unauthorised, contraindicated convenience sedative, his conversion from patient to live specimen, and the subsequent destruction of evidence (HIM), Massey’s focus is on deploying a taxpayer-funded legal hit squad to 'profile' me.
by Jordan Kelly 8 February 2026
An Expert Contributed Commentary (FOR LATEST INVESTIGATION FINDINGS, GO HERE .)
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