Anyone had experience with American Home Shield?

Question

Does anyone have experience with American Home Shield for their rental properties? Are they worth it?

Nathan Gesner · Answer

Home warranty programs are money-makers for the company, not for the client. WalMart tries to sell you an extended warranty on every electronic. Why? Because they know you're unlikely to use it, and when you do they either won't cover your claim or they will charge you some kind of service fee that makes them whole.

There are many other reasons why home warranties are bad. I'm a REALTOR and I never offer them to clients.

Julia Hagen · Answer

Yeah, I do!! I’ve been working on a budget, financial plan, profit & loss etc.. in doing so I’ve been “auditing” all of our bank accounts, line by line. Today I discovered I’ve been paying American Home Shield $35, $37 & $70 PER month for a year on our 3 homes and I had no idea!!

I went to their website and although it recognized Googles auto populated username and password I had no account. There were no properties or policies listed. Eventually I found a “welcome” email, only one email, in my Gmail. It stated that I needed to “click the link” in order to activate my account - which I never did.

After calling them I got the bad news. The policies are on auto pay AND auto renewal so I have to call back tomorrow to fight w/a different division to cancel the policies.

I don’t know how this happened. I was shopping for warranties for our 3 rentals a yr ago and ended up paying $7,000 for 6 yr policies with Home Choice - which has been an absolute nightmare!! I’m going to have to try and get a refund from them too!! I must have thought that NOT clicking “activate” meant I wouldn’t be paying for policies w/American Home Shield (I’m suuuch an idiot!!! 🤯)

Go to The Better Business bureau and check their ratings.  Both companies suck but do have impressive customer service outcomes from recent complaints.  I ended up learning from the local repair companies that some policies, especially if u have the “Gold” level policy, are much better than others. They said Fidelity was much easier to work w/than Home Choice (everyone hates them) but when we had Fidelity it was the appliance repair company that refused to submit their final summary to replace our stove - even after Fidelity moved it from “repair” to “replace” status. I fought with them for eight weeks and then gave up.

Hope this helps. Good luck!!!

PS Whenever we’ve purchased a new home we moved into we’ve always had a home warranty in the first year and have always had at least one new appliance replaced, no problem. I think that’s what home warranties work best for.

Jay Hinrichs · Answer

totally not worth it

Chris Seveney · Answer

@Jose N.

Not worth it.

Anyone had experience with American Home Shield?

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