Home Warranties...thoughts/experiences please.

Migue

Migue

New member
What are your experiences with these Home Warranty companies? do you think they're worth the trouble?

My Home AC has been out since last Thursday , called them the next morning to file a claim and what not and i didn't get a tech to come over to my House until Yesterday , and he only came to take a look at the unit. After he got off the phone with the Warranty people, he explained to me that compressor was shorted etc etc and they(warranty) won't cover any modifications done to repair the unit(Tech said it needed a copper line modification or something like that).

At the moment i am waiting for a new compressor to become "available for pickup" from the local distributor(warranty co. won't even give me their name) and they are being told 3-5 business days. So bottom line it looks like the total time to get an AC Unit looked at and compressor replaced is over a week/almost 2.

What i'm wondering about is:

-is this wait time normal? I've known of other people that have gotten their AC repaired/parts replaced all within the same day or 2 .
- shouldn't there be a compatible compressor from the same mfg available for a replacement? Instead of having to modify things, is that even needed every time a compressor goes out?

I'm pretty sure i'm getting jerked around here with these people , especially with them charging me for the modification($225) . it is my first time ever using one of these companies (I've only had my House for a year).

So far, their customer service has been very poor, I've had to contact them to get updates because they won't even take the initiative to let me know what the current situation is. I even asked them "what if this was an emergency repair, is it even possible for you guys to expedite anything?" and they just say that they have no control over lead times and what not. It just seems like a long waiting game and too much back and forth.

Thoughts and experiences please,i'm curious to see if you've experienced similar wait times with or without going through a warranty co.
 
Migue -
I am so sorry this happened to you - especially since you live in hot, humid in places, Texas..

When you read that Home Warranty paperwork, what does it say about coverage for what items ???

Lets talk about the A/C unit, I assume out in the back yard, close to the house, ok ?

There is a small compressor in the bottom of that square metal box and a fan at the top of the box that turns on and pulls outside air, through all those fins that surround the box.

These fins pull air through them and cool the copper lines that run all around that box, that are full of whatever level Freon is in the system, that then sends that cooled freon up to the back of the air handler in the attic or closet of your house, and then that fan there blows air through those copper coils and thats how you get cold air...

Unless its a really old A/C unit out side there, those things dont break that easy and I have never heard of one shorting out... What caused it to short out ???

The first thing that breaks is the fan motor above the box that pulls air through that box, as I explained above, and that fan motor is around $175 at an Appliance parts store..

It should not have taken them even 2 days to get this figured out and worked on, these guys absolutely Suck....
They are either not a real company and may be just a couple of idiots that have a listing on Craigslist or something...

Reminds me of a few years ago when i was renting a very nice house in Folsom, CA., the water heater quit working, so I called the landlord and she sent over this Plumber Clown to look at it..
He shows up driving an old beater car, and comes to the door holding a pair of PLIERS... Yeah, pliers.. Not even channel locks...
Right then I knew this clown was NOT a plumber, ever...

He messed around with it and missed a couple appts, so I just got the dang new Burner and wiring and installed it myself.. Another Craigslist idiot, you have to be careful..

I would tell these people - first - what is their business license number and state registration number, and who is the business owner, name address, phone nbr..
And when they ask you why, tell them you are filing a complaint with the State Attorney General, and that should get them going if they have any brains at all..

If they have taken this long, they could have replace the entire compressor, charged it back up with the newest Freon, tested it, and it would have been good to go..

Sorry this had to happen to you.. :(
Dan F
 
They have a small crew it seems ( i asked them) and that's how far out the one tech/inspector was scheduled for. They only have one receptionist/dispatcher/scheduler so yeah, definitely a small operation. Warranty Co. does not have any sense of urgency, so this really makes me wonder how they would have handled this in case of an emergency breakdown like plumbing or something like that. I understand they cannot control another business' lead times, but i'm sure they can shoot out the repair request in an email as a "request for lead time" to multiple businesses and set me up with whoever can handle this the quickest instead of playing Russian Roulette.

Even I was pretty sure that the compressor was the issue before i even filed the claim, i looked up the signs/issues and checked the compressor myself...it was burning HOT,it even melted a section of a weather cover that was on it. Fan was still operational and everything was kicking on except compressor , maybe a low charge that caused the item to overheat and stop running while the fan was still kicking?

The "tech" didn't even tell me what may have caused it, just said that it "shorted out big time" .He was very short with me the whole entire time and unapproachable, i simply just asked him after a few minutes of him looking at it and me telling him all the symptoms/exactly what happened "so in your opinion what do you think could be wrong with it" and he's just "I DON'T KNOW, I'M NOT DONE LOOKING AT IT" , and i was just trying to get a small opinion , wasn't expecting him to tell me exactly what the final diagnosis was. If i'm doing a vehicle inspection and a client is asking me if something can be taken care of and how, i don't go " I DON'T KNOW I'M NOT FINISHED YET" . As a professional , one could start giving a client the possibilities on the situation to at least give him some expectations and just have good customer service but oh well, too many clowns in this world unfortunately.

I'm curious to see what the next tech will be like(the one doing the actual repair/replacement) and if it's even going to be a durable fix with the modification needing to be done . Heat has been a PIA this past week because it takes a while for it cool down at night over here,thankfully i had bought a great little snail fan for the garage and mobile jobs, and it's been a life saver. I grew up without AC in my House down in Puerto Rico, and that was a concrete House! Yes it gets more humid than here but year round, as soon as the sun starts to drop, everything cools off fairly quickly with that sea breeze.

Bottom line, this Home Warranty crap just makes everything go sooooo slow, i thought it'd be better than a Home/Auto insurance company but it's pretty much the same.
 
I don't believe in warranties or insurances anymore... Had so many bad experiences. A few major ones... My $7k bicycle was stolen and it took over 2 years to get a replacement bike from insurance. My extended warranty on my Jeep SRT8 was a total lie/scam ended up getting refunded $6,900 thanks to Canadian consumer protection :)

Health care is a must as is collision insurance, IMHO.
 
I can't resist...

Stokdgs, I know exactly what you are saying but... Channel Lock is a brand, the to that most people refer to as "channel locks" are actually adjustable pliers. So, yep. :)

I am in agreeable with 4u2nvinmtl on insurance being a ripoff. I could go on for a while about why but I'll spare the details. However, I don't feel that the government has a right to force the citizens to purchase private insurance. If you want me to have Healy insurance and you're going to require it, take it from my taxes. And auto, well, according to the Supreme Court that's not really a requirement either but I'll let you guys google that one.

More to the point, sorry to hear about your experience, Migue. If I were you I would look into the legal side of things and see if there is a way to speed up the process.
 
Yeah insurance is bad. I'm intimately familiar with 3rd party Rx type companies and Medicare. They are all rotten. I used to be familiar with aftermarket auto warranties. They were rotten as well.

Basically, I'd tell these jokers you have someone living in the house with some respiratory ailment that will end up in the hospital soon unless you get the AC fixed now.

Yes, it sucks you have to lie. But, hopefully once they hear that, they MAY fear a possible lawsuit. Sometimes you have to just fight fire with fire - or you end up a sucker.
 
Migue, there are a handful of things that usually go wrong outside at the condensing unit. How old is the unit?

You could have had a compressor motor "burnout" which requires a good refrigerant flushing of the system and a new liquid line drier (a must)
There's not much out there to check. Just some fuses, a contactor controlled by the 24v thermostat, that fan on top someone mentioned, and two capacitors or a dual cap.
It could be any of those above but so many times it's the cap that goes. If the compressor is a bit hard to start they can put in a Hard Start Kit that adds more oomph to get the compressor going.

Good luck. .hopefully they make good on your repair soon.
 
I've never gone for service contracts or extended warranties. I always take my chances and usually end up with enough years under my belt to consider myself self insured. You'd be surprised, if you google your problem you can fix almost anything in your house with the help from Youtube. I've done it several times over the years including my central a/c. and on a handy scale I'm about a 6.5
 
I agree Dogfather, i usually read up on it and start looking up trouble shooting guides etc and that's what i did with the compressor. Since i had paid for the 1st year of Warranty i thought i'd give it a shot(first time filing a claim). I spoke to a very local small AC Business owner(man has nothing but great reviews and reputation) who took the time to talk to me and is going to come out today and give me a 2nd opinion since i'm still waiting on the part to be available from the "local distributor".

I also agree with everyone that Insurance is just a total scam, i thought that Warranties were easier to deal with but now i see that is not the case really . I hate insurance companies and now i see that warranty companies are not much different, so once this gets taken care of, i'm going to call them to let them know i am dropping them due to their horrible service.

I have 2 dogs in the House, and it's been getting around 90 degrees in it, so i'm going to use that as well and tell them one of them had signs of heat exhaustion and what not. Monetary wise, it hasn't been bad because they did not deny the claim and are only denying this "modification" (which i am getting a 2nd opinion on today) that the local AC Clowns are claiming needs to be done. The lead times is what's ridiculous here and how they are so out of touch with whoever they are assigning the work to.

I've heard of a few companies that allow you to call in your own repairs and as long as you have documentation that it was a legit claim ,they'll go ahead and send you the money to cover the expenses, so i'm going to carefully investigate such company to see how accurate this is.

Thanks everyone for your input on the situation.
 
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