Should you sign up for AAA Premier?

My young adult daughter’s location hadn’t left Elko, Nevada, for hours, according to her circle on my iPhone map.

Having my child go on a cross-country road trip with friends was a mom first for me. I didn’t want to abuse my location tracking privileges by calling to ask why they had stopped.

Finally, I got the call that cleared up my confusion — and deepend my worry.

“So, everyone’s OK. But we had some car trouble,” Nutmeg told me.

AAA is not sponsoring this post. But I will tell you up front that when I got that call, I was so glad we had signed up for AAA Premier. The funny thing is, our membership had already paid for itself before this emergency happened!

Is AAA Premier membership worth it?

Breakdowns, running out of gas, flat tires, dead batteries — so many mishaps can lead you to need a roadside assistance plan. Of course, AAA isn’t the only provider. A lot of premium credit cards include roadside assistance. Most car insurance policies offer it as an option, too.

For years, I resisted signing up for AAA, mainly because I had a credit card that included roadside. However, at some point I dropped that card, and ended up a AAA customer. Now, I’m sold on the benefits AAA offers, especially at the Premium level.

The 3 levels of AAA benefits

When you join AAA, you choose between the Classic, Plus or Premier plans. Here’s what each plan includes:

AAA Classic ($64.99/year): This is your basic roadside assistance package. You get up to four service calls per year. When you call, you can get your battery charged up, or get towed up to 5 miles. If you’re out of gas, they’ll bring you some. If you’re locked out of your car, they can send a locksmith, and reimburse up to $50 of the cost.

AAA Plus ($99.99/year): Offers the same as AAA Classic, but free towing increases to 100 miles, and they’ll reimburse $100 in locksmith fees. You also get a travel insurance policy with up to $750 in trip interruption protection, and up to $250 in lost baggage coverage.

AAA Premier ($124.99/year): Same as AAA Classic, except with 200 miles of free towing and $150 locksmith reimbursement. With this level only, you can also use that reimbursement if you get locked out of your home. If AAA tows you, you get a free rental car for one day. The trip interruption coverage increases to $1,500, and lost baggage goes up to $500. You also get $25,000 worth of emergency medical transportation.

Why I upgraded to AAA Premier

My husband lost the electronic keyfob to our car. A locksmith was going to charge more than $100 for a new one. When I found out that AAA Premier and Plus would cover locksmith fees, I upgraded and called the locksmith the same day. I don’t remember what the locksmith charged, but it was more than the cost of the upgrade.

Note that you do not have to be locked out of your car to get reimbursed for locksmith service. They don’t ask on the reimbursement form why you needed a new keyfob programmed. You just pay for it, submit, and get reimbursed. In fact, I believe I can get a spare fob next year and make another claim.

At first, we subscribed to AAA only for my husband and me. Later, when my daughter bought a car to drive to her summer camp job in the Sierra, I added her. At that point, I was glad we had Premier with its 200 miles of free towing, because if she had a problem in Calaveras county, I wasn’t sure how far the tow would be.

Local branches are another major AAA benefit

If you have a local AAA office near you, it’s probably worth becoming a AAA member just for that. You can go into the branch to get a lot of services offered at the Department of Motor Vehicles, but without the hassle. For instance, my daughter registered her new-to-her car there without waiting in line. Later, when we needed to add my name to her title, we were able to get tons of help from the staff with no “government employee” attitude. It’s honestly amazing.

You don’t have to be a Premier member to take advantage of this service. Just a standard membership gets you into this bureaucratic paradise.

The emergency that cemented my loyalty to AAA Premier

Back to that emergency phone call.

My daughter drove through summer in the mountains without issues, fortunately. But then she decided to drive with friends all the way back to college in Wisconsin.

As a parent, I didn’t love the idea. She’d be putting so many miles on her car. And such a long trip included plenty of opportunity for misfortune. I was especially worried about them passing through the vast empty deserts of Nevada.

But my kid is 20 years old, and responsible. She’d paid for that car with her own money. I couldn’t stand in her way. I just made sure she downloaded the AAA app onto her phone, and waved goodbye.

Just as I’d feared, the car foundered in rural Nevada. Fortunately, the area where they stopped had cell service, so she was able to summon AAA for a tow to the nearest service station, in Elko. But after waiting all day for her car to be looked at, she received bad news: The car needed more work than the mechanics of Elko could offer. She called AAA again. This time, they towed her 150 miles to a Subaru dealdership in Twin Falls, Idaho.

I don’t even want to know how much that tow would have cost. But with AAA Premier, she paid nothing.

The benefits didn’t end there. Now that AAA had towed her, she qualified for a free rental car for a day, which she could have taken to tour the waterfalls around Twin Falls. She didn’t end up using that benefit. Instead, she and her friends used public transit.

She did end up using the Allianz Trip Interruption coverage that Premier includes. Because her car needed a new transmission (ugh!), she had to stay in Twin Falls for four nights, at a hotel that charged $150. She also spent about $6 on public transit during her delay. We submitted the hotel and transit receipts to Allianz, and within a few weeks, received a check for just over $600. Had she decided not to repair her car, she could have rented a car to complete the trip, and requested reimbursement for that.

She could have received reimbursement for meals as well. The only problem: She had made a grocery run before leaving — and raided my cupboard — and she and her friends simply ate from their supplies during their delay. In five days, they never once visited a restaurant or even a grocery store. This drove me crazy. She knew she had up to $1,500 to spend, but she also had a valid reason for not spending more: She didn’t know for sure that she wasn’t going to have to rent a car, or be stuck in the hotel for even longer. As a student, she didn’t feel safe risking it.

Do you really need AAA Premier or would Plus do?

Looking back on the things we’ve used our AAA coverage for, the only thing that definitely made use of Premier’s higher benefit level was that 150 mile tow. And if you’re not driving through the middle of nowhere, you’re unlikely to need a tow that long. For the key fob issue, the $100 locksmith coverage that comes with Plus may have covered our cost. (I can’t find the receipt.) And even during her five-day delay, my kid didn’t spend beyond the $750 trip interruption coverage.

Considering all that, I will probably reduce our membership to AAA Plus the next time we renew. Then again, I only found out while researching this post that Premier also provides $25,000 in emergency medical transportation. I’m going to look into the value of that more before downgrading.