UCB Parents Insurance & Benefits Recommendations

Home Warranty

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July 2002

We just learned about home warranties and wish to learn if anyone has had remarkably good or bad experiences with any of them. Has anyone ever shopped around for one? How do they work? How do they vary in what they cover? How do one find them (they are not listed in the yellow pages under home warranty). Has anyone ever used Fidelity Home Warranty which my real estate agent recommends? Thank you for any and all advice, Susan

When we first bought our house, we bought American Home Shield home warranty. It turned out to save us quite a bit of money when our stove and washing machine went on the blink within several months of moving in. They sent technicians out right away. Our stove was deemed unrepairable and we were told to purchase a new one and we would be reimbursed for a comparable amount. That was a bit difficult since the stove we were replacing was about 80 years old. We bought a $500 stove and were reimbursed quickly for about $480 of it. Our washer was repaired once by the service company they sent out but it broke again within a month. We got a great new one and were reimbursed the full amount for it, again pretty quickly. I don't remember the cost of the insurance to us but I know we saved several hundred dollars and had pretty good customer service when dealing with the people at AHS. I am glad we decided to sign up for it. Nicole
Hi, regarding home warrantly companies. We've used First American for a couple of years and have not been pleased. The vendors sent to our home have been unresponsive (i.e, not returning phone calls) and sometimes unprofessional (a furnace repair guy who wouldn't check the ducts in a basement because he was afraid of spiders). They also wiggled out of fixing a furnace claiming it was improperly installed. We had another home warrantly company that I can't recall the name of, and it wasn't as bad as First American. Naomi
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