Our biggest month for roadside assistance in 28 years!

Press release
Published on February 3, 2022

The start of 2022 will no doubt live long in the memories of Quebecers, with days of deep freeze broken only by a heavy dumping of snow. Our Roadside Assistance teams will certainly remember, since they responded to 117,729 calls in January alone. That makes it our second busiest month, after January 1994, when 141,013 calls were handled.

Arctic temps, sky-high electric bills, and a spike in battery boosts. To look at the press reports, the January we just lived through could just as well have been January 1994, except we weren’t watching Friends on our CRTs and Tonya Harding wasn’t making headlines a few weeks before the Olympics.

But in 2022, just like in 1994, our teams are keeping a close watch on the weather so they’re always prepared! All last month, they stayed ready to deploy as the frigid days approached. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve staffed up for no fewer than 14 days we identified as likely to be busy, to better serve our members. We’ve tripled, if not quadrupled, the number of people at our contact centre, on dispatch, and on our roads to meet the demand so we can continue to be there for our members when it really counts.

 

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“There’s nothing like a good polar vortex to send our call numbers through the roof. Fortunately, we have 100 years of experience in roadside assistance, so our teams can stay nimble even in such extreme weather conditions. That’s how our members can count on fast, efficient service.”

 – Pierre-Serge Labbé, Vice President, Automotive Services.

Here’s the breakdown of those 117,729 service calls:

  • 70,095 batteries were boosted, making up 60% of all services rendered.
  • 3,333 members replaced their batteries using our Battery Service.
  • 30,959 members required towing, making up 25% of all services rendered.
  • 21,882 members used the CAA Mobile app and or the website to submit their service requests.
  • 45 minutes was the average wait time for a team member to arrive.

CAA-Quebec Roadside Assistance encourages motorists who have had their batteries boosted since the beginning of the year to take advantage of the warmer days ahead to get their batteries checked and replaced as needed. After all, winter’s not over yet!

Contact our Battery Service for more information.

About CAA-Quebec

CAA-Quebec is a not-for-profit organization that assists each of its members by providing mobility, travel, insurance, and residential benefits, products, and services. CAA was named Canada’s most trusted brand in the annual Brand Trust Index for 2021 by the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria.

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