Home Warranty Companies

[Kent Harris]

I got a Home Warranty on 11 out of 12 of my rental properties. When fixing appliances or doing electrical work the contractors for the Home Warranty company do an excellent job. They charge me $65 for the service call and all is good. When it comes to Plumbing it's a different story. About 3 months ago I had a bathtub start to drip. I put in for a service call with the Home Warranty Company and the Plumber wanted $1,000 from me to replace the value and to put in an access panel for the valve for the future. Problem is they could not put in an access panel in if they wanted to, since the master bathtub was backed up to the guest bath separated by a wall! I called out another plumber that I use for my Maintenance work. He charged me $120 and replaced the Moen Cartridge he got from HD for around $40, plus $80 labor! Fast forward. I had a 40 Gallon hot water heater go out last week. The same plumbing company came out and wanted to charge me out of pocket $1,100 to bring the Water Heater up to Code! This did not include the water heater! He was going to charge the Home Warranty company $768 to replace the water heater! I told him to go take a hike and he was furious. The Home Warranty wants to do a $361 settlement which won't even cover the cost of the water heater! The next day my contractor purchased a Water Heater, Kit, and Drip Pan for $500 and charged me $150 Labor and a $50 Delivery charge for a total of $700! I looked up the Plumbing company and their a member of the BBB and have a A+ Rating with only 2 complaints! How can they charge so much for so little work? Where can I find a reasonable plumber, HVAC, and Electrician in the Houston area? I had looked at other posts and see I should have consulted with Bigger Pockets before spending $6,000 for Home Warranties on 11 house's. It was a bad idea in the history of bad idea's!