Forced to wait on hold for 3 hours for approval and assistance

On the night of the 27th of January I hit a pothole outside of Secunda which caused enough damage to the passenger side front wheel and steering to stop me from driving and prevented towing by another vehicle. At this point I called the Discovery Insure call center to report the damage and request a towing service. This was at 00:30, and I was placed on hold for the next hour trying to get through to a person to report the accident.

2 friends and I kept calling the call center for an hour attempting to get through with zero response, instead we placed on a continuous cycle of hold. Eventually we were forced to call around for the Discovery approved towing service in Secunda to get them to come out and assist. By this time it was 01:30 in the morning and the rain was pouring down with my vehicle stuck on the side of the road.

After the towing service arrived at around 02:00 he joined in our attempts to contact someone, anyone, at Discovery Insure to report the accident and get approval for towing. Now we had four people trying the call center for another half hour before we managed to get hold of someone to take the details and begin the process of approval. This process took another half hour before we finally got approval the car could loaded for moving to town.

Total time for the entire process from my first phone call to vehicle loaded was almost 3 hours with most of that time spent on hold with the call center, with me and my vehicle stuck on the side of the road in the rain. How can any of this be even remotely acceptable?!

I am frankly disgusted and infuriated by this complete disregard for a paying member, the delay in receiving assistance could have led to far more serious damage to myself or my vehicle in those weather conditions. I cannot believe the call center was so busy for 3 hours that they could not assist, especially considering that once the towing service got involved we received far quicker feedback. Either jack up your call centers or go back to the guys you were working with before because the current situation will continue to cost you members.

I will be moving to another insurer as soon as possible and I would suggest to others to do the same if they are concerned about receiving prompt assistance in an emergency situation.