06/08/2026
Home warranties. Are they worth it? NO!!!!!!!!!
In the past 16 years we have been partnered with American Home Shield, Allied, Choice, First American home warranty or any of the other companies. They are only worried about their billions of dollars in profit, not you the home owner.
These companies take your money monthly.
Mind you, if the technician says any magic words to them like “lack of maintenance”, “rust”, “not normal wear and tear” and such, they will deny your claim. If you have too many claims, they will drop you. Companies like mine are told specifically, keep your cost low, meaning, don’t fix it right, just bandaid the unit. Cheap, cheaper, cheapest or as we say in the office CHPTR (you can’t get cheaper unless you cut corners and remove value). Companies like mine that do system diagnostic not symptom diagnostic are penialized for taking care of the customer and making sure the job (service or install) is done correctly, efficiently, by code and making sure customers are happy.
These insurance companies also allow companies like mine to charge for non-covered items, codes and modifications. Policies do not always cover everything and to my knowledge very few policies cover everything. Cheaper companies love to cut corners to make more money on non-covered cost while charging over blown cost. For example, last year, we were called out for a second opinion on a customer whose unit was not working. She got charged for a plenum modification. Now usually that means duct board, duct seal and duct seal tape. OH NO. This guy used a roll of cheap duct tape to fill in the gaps. Other examples are pulling a vacuum. These cheap companies literally let the air out of the lines with a tool until it sprays out refrigerant instead of using a vacuum pump to get the non-condensable out of the lines. Purging the lines until it sprays Freon is not, I repeat not proper installation.
They hope that the until will last until day 61, when their labor warranty is over and they can charge the home warranty company to come back out again and charge them again.
The warranty company is worried and tacks per call average. So the cheaper per call is, the more calls they get from the warranty. The more per call, the less calls a company gets. I average $1818 per call last year. My job is to make sure the home owner heating and air conditioning is safe and working properly. The insurance company job is to make sure I get paid, the customer is happy and they retain a client too. Happy customer equals a repeat customer. I will not be the cheapest and we will not cut corners to save them insurance company a dime but we will make sure your home is safe. We don’t cut corners and we follow code.
I refuse to jeopardize my reputation and do sub par work to make insurance companies happy. If i have not said it once, i have said it a hundred times, insurance companies of all branches are socialist. They raise your rates even if you don’t have claims and 99% they never go broke, they just get bigger, get bought out and get richer.
Allied and choice home warranty owe me more than $5000 each and I have other HVAC owner friends who tell me they are also owed money for completed jobs.
I have customers call me everyday asking to work for what ever home warranty company they bought or found or offered through what ever program. Remember, these companies will sell you policies and have absolutely no one to come out and help you. You have to find someone and 99% we will not work for or contact your warranty company. If you can’t find someone to call into them and get permission to do anything they will not reimburse you for your service call or repair.
Cheap, cheaper, cheapest and CHPTR is the mantra of insurance companies.
Save your money. Put that money in an envelope and save it for a rainy day.
Stop making insurance companies richer.
