home warranties, are they good, should i get?
October 17, 2019 12:08 PM Subscribe
we have an older house, older pool pump, older air conditioner. should we look at a home warranty?
we are NOT worried about appliance coverage, and even the pool pump is not really a major concern. its 99% about the AC. seems like these warranties are in the neighborhood of about $50 a month plus a service call fee. if the AC fails it's likely to be a whole new unit, so that's like $10k. what's the gotcha? will they never actually cover anything? do they only keep fixing pieces but never replace? what's the catch....
i can't find unbiased reviewed of their services, so please point me to those, or provide your own first hand accounts of yays or nays on these things... all previous questions are like a decade old...
we are NOT worried about appliance coverage, and even the pool pump is not really a major concern. its 99% about the AC. seems like these warranties are in the neighborhood of about $50 a month plus a service call fee. if the AC fails it's likely to be a whole new unit, so that's like $10k. what's the gotcha? will they never actually cover anything? do they only keep fixing pieces but never replace? what's the catch....
i can't find unbiased reviewed of their services, so please point me to those, or provide your own first hand accounts of yays or nays on these things... all previous questions are like a decade old...
I also had a great experience with home warranty. We bought an older house as-is with the condition that the seller throw in a year of home warranty. In that year we lost both our water heater and our washer/dryer and they replaced both things with spiffy new models that will hopefully last a nice long time. I can't tell you if it's worth $50 a month or if your specific warranty vendor is any good, but when I needed the warranty it was there for me and they met their obligations. It was a very smooth process.
posted by zeusianfog at 12:36 PM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by zeusianfog at 12:36 PM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
The Internet is rife with stories of home insurance only covering cheap appliances as replacements. They're not incentivized to buy you a really great new air conditioner when yours goes out, they're incentivized to replace it as cheaply as possible. The general consensus seems to be that they're not worth the money, same as the extended warranty that your car dealer will try to push.
posted by chrisamiller at 12:48 PM on October 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by chrisamiller at 12:48 PM on October 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
In my experience, they are willing to either replace the item with one of their choosing, or apply the cost of that unit to one of your choosing. In the first year I had the warranty, I had the wiring of my home's heating completely redone, the range replaced (with one of my choosing), and a fair bit of plumbing work done.
When that year expired, I looked at my previous year's home maintenance expenses, added them up, subtracted the cost I would have paid for service visits and the warranty, and saw that in 7 years out of 8, the warranty would have been a better deal. It's kind of a pain in the ass dealing with them, but it was financially sound enough that I re-upped the second year.
I have AHS, the only company that provides coverage in my area. (I live on a ferry-serviced island, so I've got a bit of a weird situation.)
posted by Capri at 12:55 PM on October 17, 2019
When that year expired, I looked at my previous year's home maintenance expenses, added them up, subtracted the cost I would have paid for service visits and the warranty, and saw that in 7 years out of 8, the warranty would have been a better deal. It's kind of a pain in the ass dealing with them, but it was financially sound enough that I re-upped the second year.
I have AHS, the only company that provides coverage in my area. (I live on a ferry-serviced island, so I've got a bit of a weird situation.)
posted by Capri at 12:55 PM on October 17, 2019
Response by poster: The general consensus seems to be that they're not worth the money, same as the extended warranty that your car dealer will try to push.
do you have any sites or anything i can peruse those sorts of opinions for my own circumstances?
posted by chasles at 1:41 PM on October 17, 2019
do you have any sites or anything i can peruse those sorts of opinions for my own circumstances?
posted by chasles at 1:41 PM on October 17, 2019
the first place I got, our home warranty worked out ok. They paid for a new water heater, would have cost some $600 on its own; that was nice. I'm not sure that it actually paid out at more than we paid in, though.
lulled into a false sense of security, I kept the home warranty on our second place. What a horrorshow that was. When my expensive, new GE refrigerator died, they fought me every step of the way. A stream of incompetent, surly "technicians" were marched through my new kitchen, failing to diagnose the problem and order the replacement, but doing some nasty damage to my cabinets. It took weeks and weeks of constant, hair-pulling agita to get them to pay up and even then they paid out much less than what it would have cost to replace that same model. I happened to be between jobs at the time or I never would have been able to spend the amount of phone time that it took to get it resolved.
When I checked, I saw a number of class action lawsuits were ongoing against them, for exactly this sort of shenanigans. I think the company was American Home Warranty. Absolute nightmare.
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:01 PM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
lulled into a false sense of security, I kept the home warranty on our second place. What a horrorshow that was. When my expensive, new GE refrigerator died, they fought me every step of the way. A stream of incompetent, surly "technicians" were marched through my new kitchen, failing to diagnose the problem and order the replacement, but doing some nasty damage to my cabinets. It took weeks and weeks of constant, hair-pulling agita to get them to pay up and even then they paid out much less than what it would have cost to replace that same model. I happened to be between jobs at the time or I never would have been able to spend the amount of phone time that it took to get it resolved.
When I checked, I saw a number of class action lawsuits were ongoing against them, for exactly this sort of shenanigans. I think the company was American Home Warranty. Absolute nightmare.
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:01 PM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
Generally I don't think a home warranty is worth paying for because you have to use their recommended technicians who often are in the network of the home warranty just to make money off appointments. Which by the way there's usually still a fee when you need a technician to come out. This is in addition to fees you already pay for the warranty. Another thing is that often times the technions in the network are not the best in the biz...they are usually poorly reviewed on yelp, ect. Not always but often. Now of course if you're buying a house and the seller offers to pay for a home warranty by all means take it. But paying out of pocket...I don't reccomend. Sure you may get lucky and something breaks that's covered but generally warranty companies go out of their way to drag their feet about coverage. I also prefer to choose my own technician with good reviews.
posted by ljs30 at 11:03 PM on October 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by ljs30 at 11:03 PM on October 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I had a home warranty on my first house. The only claim I made was for a new water heater when ours broke. The warranty company was very helpful and timely but they required that the water heater be brought up to the newest codes (house was built in the 80s), which was not covered by the warranty. In total it was $1200 worth of work, the warranty paid $600, and we were out the other $600, which essentially would have been the cost to do it ourselves.
AC is a whole other matter though, thats quite a bit more expensive. If you're worried about having to replace that soon, I'd go with the warranty, but also be sure to check the fine print as the replacement may not be just a simple swap out.
posted by LizBoBiz at 2:23 AM on October 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
AC is a whole other matter though, thats quite a bit more expensive. If you're worried about having to replace that soon, I'd go with the warranty, but also be sure to check the fine print as the replacement may not be just a simple swap out.
posted by LizBoBiz at 2:23 AM on October 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
Best answer: We've had our home warranty since moving into our house in 2014. The biggest issue is that there are caps on specific repairs and sometimes that will not cover the cost of some more expensive appliances or basic equipment like water heaters. It's been entirely worthwhile for our house with most years saved repair costs easily outweighing the annual premium.
Last year AHS chose not to renew our policy because we used them quite a bit. I moved to Fidelity Home Warranty and they have come through on two issues I've called to have fixed. I will just have to see if they raise the premium or choose not to continue the policy after this year.
posted by drossdragon at 9:27 PM on October 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
Last year AHS chose not to renew our policy because we used them quite a bit. I moved to Fidelity Home Warranty and they have come through on two issues I've called to have fixed. I will just have to see if they raise the premium or choose not to continue the policy after this year.
posted by drossdragon at 9:27 PM on October 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
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I had a good experience with my home warranty, though. I bought an old house whose sellers paid for the warranty, and my A/C went out the first summer (to no one's surprise). Someone was there to fix it the next day. It cost us the $100 service fee. We also had a plumbing emergency it would have covered but unfortunately I forgot about the warranty in that case. The warranty easily paid for itself with only the A/C repair.
posted by something something at 12:17 PM on October 17, 2019