The National Roadside Assistance Alliance, in collaboration with ABEAC, is promoting a demonstration that will end at San Mamés next Monday. A statement will be read out there.
The roadside assistance sector, represented by the National Roadside Assistance Alliance, has said "enough". Insurers are still failing to comply with the law by not indexing their rates to fuel price increases. As a result, tow-truck companies keep absorbing costs, accumulating losses of 63 % that put them at serious risk of closure. For this reason, the Alliance has called a series of slow marches. The first of these will take place on Monday 14 November in Bilbao.
These marches have been called after exhausting a schedule of meetings and contacts held over more than four months with representatives of both sides. The Alliance wants to raise public awareness of a problem that is nothing less than the very survival of the sector; the economic conditions are leading to the economic unviability and possible closure of hundreds of companies in 2023.
Neither insurers nor other intermediaries – motoring clubs, platforms – have complied with the obligation, in force under the March decree-law, to index the increase in fuel prices in tow-truck service rates; nor, of course, have they applied this price update retrospectively. In this respect, Xavier Martí, the Alliance's spokesperson, has said that "millions of euros are now owed to the assistance sector, while insurers are making ever greater profits in their income statements".
The imbalance in the sector translates into figures. Assistance companies have to work with rates more than 40 % below the prices needed to avoid technical insolvency. Insurers, for their part, have announced profits of 2,662 million euros in the first half of 2022 (9.3 % more than the previous year).
The first of the assistance sector's slow marches gets under way
The Bilbao march will start in Ugaldebieta and follow this route: Avenida de Sabino Arana, Moyúa, the Deusto and Euskalduna bridges and the San Mamés esplanade, where it will end. There, a statement will be read out denouncing the situation of a sector that insurers, assistance platforms and motoring clubs are literally driving to ruin. The abuses in contracts are countless: neither the cost of the services nor the conditions for managing 24/365 assistance are covered.
Martí made the following announcement: "We are going to have to take to the streets to denounce the abuses in prices and conditions that insurers, motoring clubs and travel assistance platforms impose on our companies". Tow trucks from all over the Basque Country will take part in this slow march, both members of the Asociación de Empresarios de Euskadi del sector de Auxilio en Vía Pública (ABEAC) and tow-truck companies from other towns in the Basque Country, as well as from other parts of Spain.
The National Roadside Assistance Alliance is made up of the following regional and national associations and business organisations: ABEAC (Balearic Islands), ABEAC (Basque Country), ASCA (Catalonia), AMEAC (Madrid), ASCALEAC, (Castile and León), ASEDA (Andalusia), ASEGA (Galicia), AGRUAXA (Salamanca), ASEXTEAC (Extremadura), GRUPO CARTER (National), CEPAS (National), FEGRUAL (National Federation) AGREGA-GRÚAS and REAC (National Group).