Home Warranties

M.,

I used to be a realtor and saw that many of my clients were having trouble with their home warranty companies. It usually took me calling and threatening not to recommend them to any of my clients for me to get the company to respond. They were such a headache for both me and my clients. I became fed up and actually did not renew my warranty after what I saw others experience.

My recommendation, take the money you would spend on a home warranty and put the money in a savings account. It may be several years before you need it and it will be there. It will be much less of a headache.

I agree with Tracy, take the money you would spend on a home warranty and save it for repairs, you'll come out better. We have had had home warranties on several of the houses we've bought (3 out of 5), but it has yet to be a good deal. Now we have one and had a water heater issue. Although they did come out in a timely manner, the "fees" that they charged us came out to be more than if we had just called a plumber ourselves. Basically, we're at a break-even at best. Coldwell Banker's home warranty is a MAJOR rip-off, they won't pay for anything. We have First American now, and won't renew in Aug.

We've had American Home Shield for 10 years now and have never had any problems with them. I have heard that other people have, though. We have had our A/C-heating system repaired and later replaced, our stove repaired, washer repaired, etc. Just having the A/C replaced has been worth the cost for us, although we do have an older home with more things to go wrong.

We have American Home Shield and they were great fixing our disposal when it went out but when it came to fixing our air conditioning when it went out on the hottest day last summer was another issue. It took my mom who sells real estate to get high enough up to at least have them come out within 2 days and even then they would just pay for a bandaid repair job. We ended up just taking the $1000 they were willing to pay and put it towards getting a whole new system. So $6000 later we now have a functioning air conditioner. I don't know how they are on fixing other appliances but we haven't had wonderful luck yet.