A FORDINGBRIDGE man has described his "lonely" ordeal after being forced to wait 13 hours by the roadside after his car broke down.

Russell Sach was travelling to work in the West Country late last night (Wednesday, June 28) when "a symbol came on the dash".

He said: "I didn’t like how the car started to handle, I turned around to go home, but only got to here, the power and everything just suddenly went.

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"No power, no lights, no anything. I just had to phone the RAC and wait."

Russell's car had broken down on the side of the road outside Longford Primary School, where he ended up spending the night.

"Thirteen hours sitting here, maybe thirteen is lucky, maybe I should get a lottery ticket or something.

"It was lonely really, because I’ve just got my mind, there’s no radio, there’s no power. So you’re just watching the traffic, then watching the sun come back up again, and just standing out here and listening to the birds when they start to sing at dawn.

"It’s more of a mental prison sentence, the fact I hadn’t had any sleep has put my health at risk."

Russell was displeased with the RAC, and how his situation was handled.

"The problem is the RAC just hasn’t delivered.

"They promised someone within two hours, then I got a call from them at midnight saying they would get a contractor out, they turned up three hours later, at just after three in the morning.

"They lifted the bonnet and I said to them exactly what I’d told them three hours before, that I needed recovery because he couldn’t do anything to rectify the problem.

"He didn’t have any batteries or any leads and couldn’t tow me."

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Despite being much later in the night, it seemed that no progress had been made, and Russell was back to square one.

Fuelled by nothing but cups of tea provided by staff at Longford Primary School, Russell patiently waited for 13 hours before a recovery vehicle from Ashley Wood Recovery eventually arrived to tow his car away, at around 11:40am on Thursday, June 29.

Russell said: "I'm not stood here for fun, this isn't a sponsored thing I'm doing for charity.

"I haven’t slept for nearly two days now, because I was expecting at some point in the night for one of these lorries to come over and to take me home, and take the car into a garage, you just can’t sleep when you’re waiting for that sort of thing really."

Russell expressed his gratitude to the school, who had also given him some biscuits to keep him going.

"The school have been really hospitable, they’ve been very kind, they’ve given me cups of tea, some biscuits, charged my phone.

"They’ve been the saviour, they’ve shown how customer service should be, and the RAC haven’t indulged in that."

Russell expressed his concerns about the RAC customer service line.

"It used to be that you’d phone a number and actually speak to someone and tell them what your problem was

"These days when you phone up you get a text message sent to you asking you to fill out a two-minute survey. I got a text message saying ‘We’re very busy at the moment, we’ll assign someone to you as soon as we can.’"

"I’ve been with them for twenty-four years, but it’s looking like that’s not going to be renewed."

The Journal has contacted the RAC and Ashley Wood Recovery for a response.