Tell me about your home warranty experiences.

[prairiewindmomma]

We bought our home several months ago. As part of the deal, the sellers threw in a home warranty.  Our air conditioner died yesterday.  We had a routine maintenance done on it two weeks ago.  At the time, the components looked good. It's not blowing air out at all, so I'm guessing that it's one of a number of electrical components that range from affordable to dang expensive that has failed.

 

Summer temperatures and humidity are here.  I am skeered that making a warranty claim is going to drag out into a long expensive fiasco.  My friends have had mixed experiences---but all of them took weeks to get their ac fixed through a home warranty company. I'm debating just ponying up the money for the diagnostic and repairs myself.

 

What have your experiences making claims through home warranties been like? (Please tell me that they have been good because it's 86F in the house already on a cloudy day in the early morning.)

[MotherGoose]

My sister has had good experiences. I do think you need to be assertive about calling and dealing with them though.

[Truscifi]

We have one. We haven't had to use it for AC, but we used it when our ceramic stovetop cracked. They had a repair person out here the next day, determined the whole top had to be replaced, then called me 2 days later to ask if I wanted to do that or get the cost of the repair back to put toward a new stove. We did that - the stove was 10 years old and the cost of the repair was over half the cost of the new stove - and we got the new stove the same week. The check arrived about the same time the stove did, actually.

 

So I felt my claim moved pretty quickly, but it would have been several more days waiting for the part to come in if we had elected to have it repaired instead.

Edited May 22, 2016 by Truscifi

[elegantlion]

My parents have had one for years. It's one of the better policies and they pay for the visit - I think it's $60 - and have had so much work done over the years. The company is pretty prompt and has good customer service. 

[Guest]

I think it's dependent upon the cost of the repair. For a hot water heater we had someone out the next day and it replaced (granted with a cheap replacement) with no problems. We simply paid the $60 for the service charge. But with AC's I have found it to be like pulling teeth. They're going to stall and then do minimal repair work leaving you with an underperforming system and you might be weeks without AC. We also found that after our top ranked company began offshoring calls we had longer waits and more issues. I do wonder if the stall tactic is part of their plan. One of our units went out last year and after two days of not having anyone call us back, we paid for it ourselves. Luckily it turned out that some of the unit was itself under warranty (ours are all Lennox and certain parts are warrantied 10 years) so that helped defray the cost a little as we only had to pay the labor. I think for small issues and appliance issues like WH they can be worth it, but I am easily pissed off on things like that to be honest so we didn't renew ours this last year when it expired. I would rather use who I want and trust than be at the mercy of someone reading a script somewhere who doesn't care that it's 105 and I have no AC.

[Spryte]

We have one. We bought our house in Aug. repairs have been quick, and painless. At least call to talk to your company.

[MysteryJen]

We bought one for the house we sold. We used it to replace the thermostat which broke when the house was under contract. Super easy and no problems.

 

It doesn't cover everything, but I would definitely use it for the A/C.

[Acorn]

Ours was a scam. It was from American Home Shield. The furnace made an explosion sound. So we call them and we could only use the one technician they would send. I was sure we would need a whole new unit so I wanted comparisons of efficiency, size, warranties etc of various units. Nope, they would only send their guy and couldn't tell us what brands and models he would install. So he gets here and needs to borrow my flashlight and screwdriver. Then he says they would only replace the unit if the one part was cracked and ours was only old. I started to question this and he said he could prove it. He would come back with CO tester and I would see that ours wasn't leaking CO. So he gets the tester and sure enough the alarm goes off. Then he says well that's not leaking from the furnace, must be the water heater. Umm No! He wouldn't budge but I owed him $50 for the worthless service call.

 

So we had to replace whole unit out of pocket, but I got to interview companies and choose what unit. I thought about getting a lawyer to deal with American Home Shield, but we needed a furnace ASAP. It was February and leaking CO.

[Spryte]

We have one. We bought our house in Aug. repairs have been quick, and painless. At least call to talk to your company.

Just to elaborate: they fixed our gas stove in Oct; and they fixed our upstairs AC in Mar or Apr. This month they fixed the downstairs AC (new thermostat). The tech said they are good, and to renew, as they will replace our AC units when it's time. They pay for an equivalent unit, and if we want to upgrade, we just pay the difference so we can choose models, units, brands.

[Entropymama]

We had one, years ago, on a house we built. Maybe it's different on new builds, but they replaced our air conditioner twice in three  years without a problem. (Although clearly there was an issue with the AC unit)

[UCF612]

We used ours to get our A/c fixed. It was fine, he came quickly and took care of the problem. It wasn't a major problem though.

[OnTheBrink]

I had American Home Shield and had good experiences. We had them out for a hot water heater, which was fixed with no problems, and when I broke the toilet tank, they even replaced the entire toilet, even though I told them I broke it myself (note: dropping the tank lid into the tank results in the tank shattering and water going everywhere.)

[prairiewindmomma]

I just wanted to update. We had a good overall experience.  Some electrical components had failed, and our service visit two weeks ago apparently was done badly---the valve to keep the freon in had not been replaced properly, causing a large leak.

[goldberry]

We got one thrown in with the house purchase.  We used it a couple of times and it was easy-peasy.  Turned out to be a really nice thing.

[Tess in the Burbs]

We have had two different companies and both times were positive experiences when we called them.  

 

One was the heat pump.  Died in the dead of winter.  Fixed something on it in a week.  The air then died in summer.  Again fixed it in about a week.  No issues filing a claim or getting it repaired.  I do recall the air thing had other things wrong that were not covered that we paid while he was doing the repair, but it wasn't anything crazy expensive b/c we were young and broke.  

 

Second time was the first day we moved in!  They did do the repair in a few days, but they do not repair the drywall.  So while the shower no longer leaked into the kitchen, we had to fix the drywall ourselves.  Luckily a nosy neighbor who heard our story came and showed dh how to do it.  

 

 

[Ellie]

Ours was a good experience. Our A.C. was replaced a month after we moved in (in August, in Texas. Yeah, it was nasty, lol.), and later, one of the toilets. No hassle at all. And we've continued to use the company who did the A.C.