Navigating Some Quirks of Auto Club Benefits
Just because you’ve seen their membership cards and their affiliated tow trucks, don’t be so sure that you have the auto club figured out.
There’s a good chance that you belong; nearly 5 million Southern Californians do, along with 39 million others across the U.S. and Canada. But even if you don’t, you probably know the basic idea: You pay an annual membership fee, and in exchange you get discounts, advice and services, including roadside assistance.
If you belong to the Auto Club of Southern California, the largest American Automobile Assn. affiliate in the U.S., you pay $64 the year you join, then $44 yearly for an individual membership, including up to four free roadside rescues.
Yet, as I was reminded this summer, the auto club and its offerings aren’t always as simple as they seem. It takes vigilance to make the best use of your membership.
Reminder No. 1 came at the Back Bay Inn, a small waterfront lodging in Baywood Park, about 10 miles west of San Luis Obispo. Before my wife, Mary Frances, and I arrived to spend two nights there in August, I called to reserve a room and agreed to the auto club rate of $150 per night. When I checked in with a credit card, the innkeeper handed back a receipt with a number larger than $300 on it, but I assumed the extra was local taxes.
On the morning I checked out, however, the innkeeper’s printout showed I was charged $160 per night, plus local taxes.
When I’m on assignment, as I was this time, I rarely identify myself as a Times travel writer because I don’t want preferential treatment. So it went this time. Instead I explained the rate confusion to the innkeeper and asked him to adjust my bill to the $150-per-night rate.
To my astonishment, he said no.
He told me that it was too late, that I should have showed my card upon check-in, and that he had no record to show which rate I was given when I made the reservation.
I gave him a moment to reconsider. He didn’t. Then I let him have his way. The first lesson: It’s important to ask about auto club discounts. Members typically get 10% off the rate they would otherwise pay, sometimes 20%, not only at major chains but also at many independent lodgings. (But don’t ask only about auto club discounts; a hotel’s senior discount may be greater. Also, hotels often offer specials that drop prices below the auto club rate. It’s usually impossible to get the auto club discount on top of another discount. )
The second lesson: Once you’ve heard about the discount, ask for a written confirmation of the rate by mail or fax. (I didn’t have that.)
And the third lesson: Check the rate when you check in. (I didn’t do that.)
If you booked the hotel through an auto club travel agent, that agent should act as your advocate in dealings with the hotel. But even if you made a direct reservation, as I did, the auto club can act as peacemaker in some cases, said Jeffrey Spring, club spokesman.
If you go digging on the Internet (https://www.aaa-calif.com), you’ll find that auto club discounts turn up on many consumer items besides travel, from flowers to eyeglasses to bottled water to barbers to Dunn-Edwards paints, which club members can buy at a 25% discount.
Reminder No. 2: The auto club’s public service side is only part of the picture. Though the Auto Club of Southern California collects billions of dollars yearly, mostly through its travel and insurance businesses, it’s officially classified as a nonprofit mutual-benefit organization (in simpler terms, a club, not a charity) and is required to make relatively few public disclosures of its finances. In fact, the auto club behaves largely like a privately held company, which includes keeping its investments secret, even from members.
Many members didn’t realize that until late June, when trade publication Travel Weekly revealed that the auto club had secretly purchased Pleasant Holidays, the nation’s leading Hawaii tour packagers, in 1999. State authorities say the deal was entirely legal, but many consumer advocates were troubled to learn that for more than two years, auto club travel agencies had been selling Pleasant Holidays vacations without disclosing the connection between the two entities.
The lesson for consumers is simply that if you choose to buy travel through an auto club travel agent, you’re not dealing with a charity; you’re dealing with a commercial entity that’s essentially the same as any other travel agency. You may pay a service fee, but most agencies’ principal income is from commissions paid by travel suppliers, including tour packagers, hotels, cruise lines and airlines.
Because some travel suppliers pay more generous commissions than others, travel agents at the auto club and elsewhere must balance the quest for commission revenue against customer satisfaction. And consumers need to keep that in mind when agents give advice, just as home buyers should when listening to real estate agents, and investors when listening to stockbrokers.
The auto club’s diamond-based rating system, made popular through the American Automobile Assn.’s 24-volume TourBook series, is another venture with subtleties a consumer might overlook.
On one hand, the books are compiled using detailed standards and an even playing field. The diamond rankings, one to five, five being best, are put together by a staff of 65 full-time “tourism editors” who in 2001 assessed more than 28,000 lodgings in North America. Fifty-nine earned a perfect five-diamond score, 3% earned four diamonds, 53% three diamonds, 35% two diamonds, 7% one diamond. In all, 194 failed to meet requirements.
On the other hand, the books, which club members get free on request as a perk of membership, are a commercial enterprise. Hoteliers can’t buy rankings, club spokesman Jerry Cheske is quick to note. But they pay for ads at the bottom of the pages (in the same way that advertisers pay for space in this section).
Hotels that have earned a ranking of one diamond or more can buy an “official appointment” as an auto club property. That latter payment depends on how many rooms the business has (the cost is $950 to $1,050 per year for a 50-room motel, Cheske said) and entitles the innkeeper to hang a lobby display plaque, use the club logo in ads, paste up window decals and hang a sign or flag with the club logo. It also entitles the lodging to have its diamond rating printed in red ink with a little AAA logo in the TourBook, instead of black ink with no logo, to make the listing stand out.
How does the club go about disclosing the commerce behind that red ink? With great circumspection. In many TourBooks, the only explanation is this sentence: “The official appointment program permits properties to display and advertise the [auto club] emblem.”
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Christopher Reynolds welcomes suggestions, but he cannot respond to letters and telephone calls. Address comments to Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012; e-mail chris.reynolds@latimes.com.
