As someone who has been a member of AAA for a few years, and who up until recently never had to make a roadside assistance claim, I was shocked to learn how completely inadequate and incompetent their services truly are during a recent incident that I dealt with. I was on my way to a day trip in a local city, and ended up getting a nail in my tire early on in the drive. Since it was 9 AM, I thought, "no big deal"- I would call AAA, and we could get the situation resolved in a timely manner. From the moment I called the service, I should have known that this was not going to end well. My car did not come with a spare, so I asked that they helped me coordinate a tow. This was a complete disaster. I waited three and a half hours for a tow truck to come, and I was calling AAA frequently because I was receiving no updates from anybody about whether or not a truck was on its way. I needed to make it to a local tire shop to get a new tire before it closed, which originally I thought was not going to be any problem. AAA was no help in this matter, and kept assuring me that the driver was "only 15 minutes away"... Three hours later, I was so upset, and there was no tow truck in sight- and the tire shop was about to close. Finally, the driver got to my location, and I was completely disappointed to see that this individual lacked a sense of professionalism that I assumed was a given. The driver demanded that I pay in cash for the tow, even though I reiterated that this was an emergency, I had no ability to plan for this, and needed to coordinate this with AAA. I ended up being out additional money for the tow, since AAA said that the tire shop was "out of range". After this whole ordeal was over, I called AAA to talk about some of my frustrations in this encounter. The customer service rep was entirely dismissive of my feelings, actually said that "if I wanted better service, I should upgrade my account", and said that I was out of luck to get my money back. Needless to say, AAA did not have my back when I needed it, and I'm positive that I could have dealt with my car trouble more effectively without their "help".