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Our contract premium AND the service call fee were both increased 20-25% to renew for the next year. (We've only had the plan one year; we bought the house in March of 2011.) I've NEVER had a home warranty company increase BOTH the premium AND the service call fee in a year!! Nor have I had the increase so high. A previous home warranty company we had in another state gave us a $5 increase in the service call fee in a 4-year time period, and they NEVER increased the premium amount from one year to the next!!
We have been told by AHS that ALL of their customers have received an increase this year in their yearly premiums and service call fees. I need to know if that is true. If you have an AHS home warranty, please reply to this post and let me know if you also got the increases. TIA..............
Those policies are a ripoff. The only time you should be paying for them is if you are selling your house and the buyer is insisting upon it. Put the money you'd spend in premiums in the bank towards any repairs...
preparingtomove....When did your AHS warranty begin and when does it come up for renewal?? AHS is saying that all contract fees are being increased upon renewal.
xinerevelle.....I don't agree. We have paid **far** less in home warranty premiums than we would have paid for the repairs that were needed and covered. In NC, we needed our A/C replaced, and the home warranty covered it. Overall it cost us **much, much less** than if we would have paid out-of-pocket. That is true for our home warranty here in SC as well.
These things are tricky...they really only pay off if you have a major system or appliance that needs to be replaced, and even then, different companies use different verbiage in their agreements to sometimes escape having to pay for it. Also, you are often at the mercy of the contractors/repairmen the warranty company sends out which, in my experience, are often low quality. I personally let my warranty lapse 4 years ago and would say that my repairs in that time paid out of pocket on my 40 year old house are easily less than the cumulative premiums/service costs would have been. However, I have a coworker who had an entire HVAC system replaced for virtually nothing (outside of the premiums), so in his case, it was totally worth it.
We have AHS; we pay $40/month, and I use it often because our house is 30 years old and all our appliances are 10+ years old.
So far, they have replaced my washing machine and dishwasher, and I am having the water heater looked at today. In the past 7 years, they have repaired our heater twice and A/C once. Just waiting for the cooktop to die ...
I think the fee is worth it, but I would not if I had a new house with newer appliances. The key, as the above poster said, is finding the best local, reliable AHS-certified contractor to deal with. The first A/C guy tried to rip me off, but luckily it was not my first rodeo.
We've had our policy with them for 5 years. The first few years the premium and the service fee went up each year. The premium has gone up every year. The first year it was paid by the sellers of the home. We've kept the contract up because the house is about 20-25 years old, and things are starting to wear out. We have 2 central heat/ac units (all old when we moved in), so we know its only a matter of time until they all just die. So far, it's paid for itself each year, but I'm still considering cancelling it after this year. I'm tired of fighting them.
This year alone it has paid for part of a new furnace and to repair my broken dryer. My gripe with them is that they do not replace broken items with items of similar quality. Our furnace was a nice, quality furnace, but it just finally wore out. They would only pay to replace it with the cheapest, lowest quality furnace available, which was only a few hundred dollars. We had to pay the difference (over $1,000) to get something of decent quality.
Also, a few months ago my new dryer (just out of new warranty) broke and the part was on back order from Maytag for over 3 months. They tried to pressure me into taking a buy-out for the dryer. They offered me $100 for the dryer, but told me they would only give me that if I ordered a new dryer through their appliance buying program. This was a brand new, top of the line dryer that I paid $1,300 for 15 months before. Just the part to repair it was almost $300 plus labor. They called me several times trying to pressure me into taking this crummy offer, and acted as though I was being unreasonable because I wouldn't take the money.
We had a policy for about $300. when our house was for sale. We needed to pay attention to the fine print, so that everything we wanted covered was covered (such as our geothermal system, and our well, etc.) While is was in force, we used it several times, and it would have paid for itself. The thing is though, we never did actually pay for it, because our house didn't sell until after the policy lapsed.
preparingtomove....When did your AHS warranty begin and when does it come up for renewal?? AHS is saying that all contract fees are being increased upon renewal.
xinerevelle.....I don't agree. We have paid **far** less in home warranty premiums than we would have paid for the repairs that were needed and covered. In NC, we needed our A/C replaced, and the home warranty covered it. Overall it cost us **much, much less** than if we would have paid out-of-pocket. That is true for our home warranty here in SC as well.
I do not know how the policies paid for themselves.
We had the policy the first year in my house.
Fortunately, the A/C handler blew out at the 11.5 month mark.
Unfortunately, they would ONLY pay for the CHEAPEST of air handlers (that were not approved to be used with the outdoor compressor!) or give you $650 value.
We just took the $650 and installed a MUCH better A/C system. (and got the tax credit as well)
When we called for plumbing repairs, they always stated the problem started BEFORE we bought the property and had the policy, so no coverage and had to pay full price for repairs.
Personally, I would just bank the $$ and save it.
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