My 10-year-old Hotpoint dryer stopped running on a Monday night. On Tuesday morning, I made a claim to American Home Shield (AHS) and they didn't get a service person out until 8 days later. During this time, I was on the phone nearly every day, inquiring about when a service person would be out, and every time the AHS rep said that they had contacted the service providing company and that they couldn't do anything for me if the company wasn't responding fast enough.
When the service person finally arrived, he looked at the appliance and reported that the motor was burnt out. I asked him what the next step was, and he said he would give AHS a call when he could get around to it. He also mentioned that it could take him 10 business days to get the part (which he also noted was located in Texas, two states over).
Of course, I went another 24 hours without hearing back from either the service person or AHS, so I had to take off my lunch break to call them AGAIN, and they told me that the service person was in the process of looking for and ordering the part, and they would call me back to let me know how long to expect it. I did the math and figured that it was unacceptable to be waiting nearly a month for a simple appliance repair when I pay a significant bill on time every month to this company, so I suggested that because of my inconvenience during this ordeal and because the service company they had matched me with was so incredibly slow, that the company should pay to replace my dryer for a couple hundred dollars instead of making me wait another 10 or more business days for a working dryer.
Apparently, AHS didn't like this suggestion because they called the next morning to report that my 10-year-old appliance had been improperly installed 10 years ago, and this is why the motor had burnt out, which was news to me. The service person had reported nothing of the sort, but AHS insisted that because the dryer had been "improperly installed" that they would cover none of the repairs.
So, instead of getting decent honest service that I thought I was paying for every month, I got to spend $55 in "service fees" to the ridiculously slow service person AND I lost wages for taking time off of work to wait for the service person.
When I complained about the "fishiness" of this sudden diagnosis on my 10-year-old appliance, one that suddenly disqualified me for service, I was placed on hold by more than one AHS rep and transferred around (and at one point asked to call back!) for nearly two hours, which resulted in more lost wages for me. AHS claimed that it wasn't their fault that the service company was so slow and offered to to send out another service person for another $55, but they warned that this company could take as long to get back to me as the last one did and that they "couldn't control that."
At this point, I realized their definition of "improperly installed" was probably quite different from any honest definition of the term, and I stated that I had lost complete trust in AHS that they had the intention of completing a competent and honest transaction with me.
My family will cancel our service plan with American Home Shield as soon as our contract is up. It's not worth paying $40 dollars a month, plus service charges, to a company who deals with slow and/or incompetent service providers then looks for ways to get out of covering appliances. This entire experience has been extremely disappointing.
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