On 7/2/2012 3:34 PM, Ashton Crusher wrote:
A friend of mine was telling me how his Home Warranty helped him pay
for a new AC unit. So I started looking into adding such a warranty
to my house. In researching companies on the web it seems that almost
all of them have dozens and dozens of complaints and reports of them
refusing to pay for repairs because of the "lack of maintenance
records", esp for any big dollar items like AC. I got "on line"
quotes from a couple of them and literally within a minute or two of
my hitting the enter key with my info my phone was ringing.

Anyone on here have any experiences? .. either as a user or doing work
for them?

A new AC unit is probably about the only item expensive enough for the
warranty to ever makes sense. Of course usually they'll just replace the
defective component, i.e. the compressor. In areas where you run the A/C
most of the year, i.e. south Florida, and the A/C often breaks, you
might save money over paying full retail price for repairs or replacement.

It's a mistake to think of a home warranty as insurance. The difference
is that the average consumer has no way of getting the same service for
the price the home warranty company is paying. In the latter case, the
company is paying the service provider at a far lower rate than what you
would pay, and paying them to do the minimum required to repair the
broken item. When you're paying yourself, you're paying at a much higher
rate, and the repair company will try to up-sell you because the cost of
a replacement might not be much more than the cost of a full-price repair.

My brother in Florida has a home warranty policy. He's gotten numerous
A/C repairs, as well as repairs on other appliances, and on his pool
pump. I think he had a 30 year old electric dryer which made horrible
noises, but which the warranty company kept repairing to a point where
it dried the clothes (after all it's really just a motor and a heating
element, both of which are cheap).

They will try to find ways to deny payment, which is why you see all the
complaints.