Home Warranties

In one word... suck. We've had one on and off (mostly on) since we've owned our home. In a nutshell, you pay the man about $450 a year (started out around $250) and, you supposedly are covered for just about everything in your house that could go wrong. There is a $55 deductible per service call. We've been with American Home Shield but there are others out there that work pretty much the same way. The whole thing is a big racket. They will always find a loophole and not cover you and pay the claim.

You don't want to read the details, but after two worthless visits from... ahem... "experts", they determined that our a/c system's compressor stopped working because of poor maintenance on our part. And this after the first guy told us that we didn't have a filter installed. Uh sir, the unit doesn't take a filter, but as they said in Airplane, "that's not important right now."

Long story short we brought out our own guy and he said those other two companies are full of shit and the item was properly maintained.

The end result is we had to buy a new a/c system and canceled the American Home Shield service. I figure we either broke even or came out slightly ahead on the years and years of premiums, but the whole thing did leave a bad taste in our mouths.

Funny end to the story. Less than a week after canceling, a fan in our refrigerator went. Another $250 down. Don't take me to Vegas with you anytime soon.

If anyone else has had an experience like this, comment on it.