The wife and I have bought a house built in 1988 and is located in the Sugarland Area. The house purchase came with a free 1 year home warrantee to cover all of the expensive parts should they fail or have issues that first year. I would never have bought a warrantee, but it's free and I might as well get all I can out of it.

Have any of you been aggressively successful at getting repairs paid for? Even partial coverage would be victory.
I would appreciate hearing any stories…..good or bad about dealing with home warrantees.

My first target is to get one of the two AC units replaced. It is unable to keep up and can't cool air temp to spec's.
I was prepared to pay out of pocket to replace it right away….but if I can get any partial reimbursement just means I have more money for other repairs or upgrades.

Thanks for any info you may provide.

Sounding bleak. But I do appreciate the feed back.

Thus far, agree with all those posting. Sorry one of those HVACs was a pig in a poke.

The target here is the HVAC your future might be

• Lawyer says you were sold a less than habitable house and law says seller has to get you a HVAC more suitable
• Warranty chosen low-baller HVAC repairman says that his SOP is only fix HVACs but IF he can get $$$ from warranty guys and $$$ from you, he could replace these HVAC parts with new ones that CAN do the job ... cross your fingers and dive deep into pockets?
• You seek out a Google 5-star rated Trane/equal dealer and getRdone with new replacement, then certify mail seller the bill, then when ignored/refused send copies to lawyer (on consignment if lucky)
• You notify the House Inspector of his false reporting, as well as the Realtor/Seller that hired him for compensation

As for me, the third one would be pursued ASAP and the rest can be either moot or on the back burner.
Consider the weather temps/humidity coming beyond the 3-4 weeks from now to have a new HVAC up, running & tweaked.

Home warranties, similar to AAA, pay contractors so little that they can't make money doing the necessary work.

I bought an American Home Shield home warranty for one year and had a ten year old rusted bottomed air handler replaced. I couldn't believe it and sort of felt guilty for submitting the claim.

They will use a low bid installers to do any work. I sold the house a year later and don't know how that worked out.

Personal experience here....I used one once when we bought our first farm. The house came with a warranty. We used it once for a water heater and I tell you it took at LEAST a month to finally get the unit repaired. Fortunately, we had 3 water heaters serving the main house so not a huge deal. The company used was a local company and they were nice enough, but the hang up was not only getting parts, but getting them approved. It was finally approved, and the work was sound, but again, if that was my only water heater, that would have sucked. I don't think you can get your premium back, so, I would probably use the warranty in only crucial situations. I would not use it for something like an AC unless it was already dead.

As stated, a lot of insurance companies have 'approved' contractors, and I can tell you from first hand experience trying (and declining) to BE one of those contractors that the approved dollar figures for the work are well below appropriate or acceptable amounts to do the work to a level that is considered even 'adequate'. You would want to verify the company doing the work and make sure they are not low bidders.

Jason_Roofer said:

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As stated, a lot of insurance companies have 'approved' contractors, and I can tell you from first hand experience trying (and declining) to BE one of those contractors that the approved dollar figures for the work are well below appropriate or acceptable amounts to do the work to a level that is considered even 'adequate'. You would want to verify the company doing the work and make sure they are not low bidders.

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This is so true. My wife and I purchased a home approximately 2 years ago which was heavily remodeled in 2018; almost everything major in the house dated to then. A few months after moving in, our AC compressor quit working and we called the seller-paid home warranty (Old Republic) to file a claim. They were surprisingly responsive with processing the initial claim, but it took several days to get a tech out to the site. When the tech was on site, he replaced the capacitor to get the unit running and topped off the coolant, but afterwards actually gave me recommendations for other AC repair companies in the area for future repairs because his company exclusively did work for the home warranty companies and he was restricted in the quality/thoroughness of the work he could provide while still meeting the home warranty contractual requirements. Meanwhile, a year later, I had to get a different company out to clean the drain line serving the unit, and in the process, this other company determined that the coolant line had not been connected completely and had been undergoing a slow leak for the past year.

I remember one I had in 09 when you'd call they'd give you the contractors number and you call them yourself. Oddly enough the plumber and HVAC companies they used both were in the same building and used the same phone system. Admin had the same voice too. Go figure.

It isn't that they have approved contractors exactly. Just that they have set up the system on reimbursement to get the results they want. The contractor gets 100% of the deductible and the reimbursement rates on the actual work is in most cases below the actual cost of the part. In some cases, they will provide the parts but the labor rates don't make it worth actually doing a repair.

This create two types of contractors. One that takes as many calls as possible just chasing deductibles and people that get fed up enough to cover the repair out of pocket. Or two, contractors that will come up with all sorts of things that aren't covered by the warranty to get you to pay.

For contractor 2, it goes something like this:

Initial Call for a leaking water heater. $75. Diagnose the problem is a 25 year old water heater with a corroded pan. Without a warranty, this is a replacement 100% of the time.

Warranty company says the water heater isn't the problem. The pan is the problem. The pan doesn't produce water but it isn't doing its job so that is the real problem.

Warranty company tells the contractor they will pay $30 for a new pan and $100 in labor to replace it. The job is pretty much the same as replacing the water heater in terms of labor and the contractor would never do this repair for so little money.

Contractor tells the customer that they will replace the pan under warranty, but there are several other items that need to be addressed to bring the water heater up to code. These aren't covered and it will be $750. They offer a complete replacement including the code issues for $3000 which includes a credit for what the warranty would have covered.

The system is rigged but buyers of these should know it is rigged. The cost for what people think they are getting would be tremendously higher. Once you subtract the profit on these policies, there is probably less than $300 in actual coverage.

Yep, here is what to expect:

1) Appliance breaks. That day you call the warranty company. They'll put you in the queue for a contractor to call you
2) At best, the contractor will call you the NEXT BUSINESS DAY just to schedule the visit
3) At best, the contractor will come out the NEXT BUSINESS DAY after #2
4) They will do the absolute bare bones repair. If by chance they replace the appliance (say, a water heater), they will find enough items that need to be "brought up to code" and charge you out the ass for them, so much that you'll essentially be paying for that water heater. And it will be the most cheap-ass replacement possible. If it's an AC, you are getting a patch job. An AC can always be patched; an entire system doesn't fail so they won't be replacing a system.

So long story short, it will take several days (or longer) to get a patch job repair or a non-AC replacement that they are going to find a way to bleed you for. Get the $$$ back for the warranty and get stuff fixed yourself, most of which can be fixed the same day it breaks.

I recently had my tankless water heater go out. They said the failure was not due to normal wear & tear so they denied the claim. The unit was 20 years old and had sprung a small leak in the heat exchanger. This small leak was dripping water onto the control board and fried it. The subpar plumber replaced the heat exchanger but said the control board was fried due to my continued use of the unit after the initial inspection. 2 1/2 months later, I had to pay out of pocked ($7700) for a new unit. Much of the price was to bring the until up to code which the warranty company would not cover anyway. Also, I noticed in small print that each until has a max per year or $3000. This warranty company was Choice Home Warranty.

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$7700 seems high for a tankless water heater. I'm about to replace my tank with a tankless (navien a-2) and including running a new gas line from the meter I'm looking at $5K.

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I got 3 estimates and this was the cheapest. My unit is in the attic. They needed to re-do a lot piping to align with the new box design. They also needed to reroute the exhaust and put in a drain pan and pipe to the house exterior. It took them 3 days so I'm not concerned about the labor costs.

I had success getting money from American Home Shield twice. About 12 years ago a user on here recommended a specific AHS-approved repair service: Sirius Plumbing and HVAC. I've used them ever since.

My AC needed to be replaced - Sirius gave us a bid and basically said they're confident that they could get $1000 from AHS. Fortunately it worked out just the way they said. I didn't think they would pay for the whole thing, so the $1000 felt like a win.

We bought another house 5 years ago. My pool vacuum pump needed to be replaced - AHS sent somebody out real quick and replaced it. As someone said, it was replaced with a much cheaper model than the one I had. While I wish I kept the old one and rebuilt it, it was an easy process.

I've had AHS for years and I can vouch for the fact that they use the lowest quality service professionals available. They certainly will take the cheapest way out. An example...I had a kitchen faucet replaced and they purchased a $30 faucet off Amazon (they inadvertently left the receipt attached to the box and I saw it). That being said, they did replace a washer, a dryer, both hot water heaters, a garbage disposal and 1 refrigerator.

i used them to schedule pest control. can't remember who they sent out, but it was a major "brand," possibly Orkin. I had it done 4 times in the 1 year period. Didn't even attempt using it for anything else since pretty much everyone told me the warranty was garbage.

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Have any of you been aggressively successful at getting repairs paid for?

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HAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHA

Good one!