American Home Shield – What a rip off!
I just realized that I did not include my only service call in the American Home Shield post regarding the Pool Warranty exclusions.
To set the frame, this was last summer. The temperature was above 100 degrees every day. My air conditioner would not cool the house. It would finally get the house down to 80 degrees around 3 in the morning (when it was in the 70’s outside). The air conditioner itself was only 2 years old, so definitely not a candidate for replacement.
AHS sent a technician to my home, it took them 4 days to do so. The service company they sent never called, and never set up an appointment. When I called the service companies office to find out when someone was coming I was told they would be there that same day and that I needed to be at the house to work with them or they would cancel my call. I don’t know about everyone, but for me it is difficult to drop everything at the office in the middle of the morning to run home and meet the technician, but I did so anyway.
So the technician shows up. Never looks at the air handler, never measures inlet/outlet temp, he just goes to the condenser and checks gas pressure. He does not have a temperature probe to tell him the temperature of the coolant lines (which according to my info you have to have the specific temperature to know what the gas pressure needs to be). Then based on the pressure check, he announced that the AC unit was “doing all it could do” and repeatedly cited that it was “awful hot out”. Then he handed me a the bill for his work, which amounted to $60. Not being a complete idiot I had already measured temperature drop, wet bulb temp and dry bulb temp in my house before I had ever called American Home Shield, and that the unit was not “doing all it could do”. When I gave the service representative the details of my analysis, he was completely unimpressed and started alternating between the mantras of “doing all it could do” and “awful hot out”. He also took the time to inform me that if I called AHS for another technician, he would come back out, but the answer and the cost would be the same. So he went on his way.
I can tell you that I have spent around 15 years of my life in some form or another of electro-mechanical service industry. I know technicians, I know troubleshooting, and I can generally figure out when the drivers for a technician are not lined up with the best interest of the consumer. It was not difficult to come to the conclusion that the guy was just hitting as many homes as he could and getting out the door.
So I called the company whose sticker was on the side of the air conditioner, since they were the original installers of the system they agreed to come out that day. They arrived in less than 2 hours after the AHS technician left. They looked the system over, found that the unit was 2lb low on Puron (the name for the new freon/coolant) and found an air leak in the intake of the air handler which was sucking hot air from the attic into the system. Total cost was $210.
With my air working now I called AHS to see if they would reimburse me for the cost of a technician who actually planned to fix the issue when they arrived and reimburse me for the cost of the technician who had no interest in fixing the issue. They said that they would not reimburse either. If I wanted to continue to pursue the issue I could fax my bill to a number they supplied, but they could not give me the number or name of anyone who I could talk to about it before or after I faxed the document. They also spent the time to assure me that the bill would not be paid and that my $60 service fee would not be refunded. I informed them that my warranty was almost up for renewal and that I would not be renewing. I also let them know that instead of taking my time to participate in their futile claim process, I would wait to join the next class action lawsuit against them.
After their outright lying about the pool coverage when I signed up for the service and having to pay for technicians who have no interest in actually fixing the issue, I told AHS to stuff their warranty. If I follow up on this rant I think it will be a cost benefit analysis of paying for a home warranty in the first place.