For those of you considering a home warranty, don't do it! Just put money into a savings account for any major repairs!
We have been with American Home Shield off and on for almost 10 years. We changed after a major issue with a gas leak where we had to fork out over $3K because the gas pipes throughout our house were no longer "up to code." Remember this term!
Unfortunately, there are no honest home warranty programs out there. We have checked.in fact one of them, Home Comfort Warranty was a scam business and the Attorney General has a vey thick file on them. They are out of business and hopefully will not resurface under a different name. We did pick AHS because both Sears and USAA our insurance company had a promotion with them. What two better names could we ask for from an endorsement perspective?
Well, just have something major go wrong and need them to fix it and you will discover how bad they can be! Our hot water heater began to leak on Friday, 6th. I filed a claim online for service because I could not get through to their 800#. We turned off the water to the heater and started to endure cold showers. Ugh. I heard back from their service provider on Saturday that they would have someone out to fix the hot water heater on Monday, June 9th.
The technician arrived at about 1:00p and my brother took him to the hot water heater closet. Within 3 minutes he was already shaking his head and told us that we had many code violations. Now, this hot water heater is less than 8 years old. The technican proceeded to tell us that the warranty would not cover any code violation work. My brother told him fine that we would call our local plumber instead then and paid him the $60 service fee. AHS called to tell us that per the technican we had code violations that would have to be repaired before he could replace the hot water heater. She proceeded to itemize all of the deficiencies from SFX (??) to water pan (it's a top filling water heater why a water pan?), etc. To the tune of $935.00 plus the hot water heater and labor. OMG.
So, the $535.00 annual premium isn't enough for AHS? Now it is all about code violations? While not necessarily significantly cheaper, I did have our local plumber replace the hot water heater and bring the whole thing up to code. It was $1,017 which is cheaper than what AHS's service provider would have charged AND I know it is done correctly and without other motives. And of course, had I not called AHS and just the plumber direct, well, let's just say it would have been 1/3 of that to just replace the hot water heater (nothing else):-)
So, save your money, spend locally! And avoid those damn code violatons!!!
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