Home Appliance Insurance scams (alternately "skate goes BIG BEAR")

[skate323k137]

tl;dr I have (had...) a policy through American Home Shield that was supposed to cover all my major appliances, with a 100 dollar deductible for any service call. The only thing I've successfully gotten them to fix was my hot water heater and that went over the weekend. Last time my furnace acted up they wouldn't fix it because it was only loud and not completely broken. The fan that exhausts the carbon monoxide was only going bad... no big deal lol. I fixed that at my own cost because it was reasonable, and I didn't want to chance it going into last winter.

Today my furnace nukes it's PCB (voltages at test points are all fucked up) and the main blower motor is hella sketch.

American home shields website had a banner that their phones were broken (they blamed a carrier outage). It said to use chat, but if you log into the user area the site goes blank.

After numerous attempts to get ahold of them I called a local reputable shop which made the assessment of the PCB needing replacement, and even if that was the only thing I'm dumping like a grand into a 20 year old furnace.

Realistically the best thing to do was get a new furnace rather than risk a 1000 to 2000 "investment" into this one.

Thankfully I can afford a new one, but having insurance on shit like this was supposed to give me peace of mind.

AHS has already told me they won't approve anything or reimburse me even though their phones and site were broken. I got ahold of them through fucking Twitter. And they canceled my account with no ID confirmation at all, just my address and zip. Clown shoes.

I'll probably send a receipt and demand letter to their legal team for laughs but I expect fuckall. The agent on Twitter refused to answer questions about their contractual obligations, like "does AHS have any contractual obligations to be available during emergencies like no heat in sub freezing temperatures?"

Several friends and strangers alike replied to me on the tweets also saying they have been ripped off, or are currently without heat or various appliances due to AHS. I would look over my contract but their website is too broken to download it

 

[fake]

I used to run their YouTube channel. I distinctly remember them as the one client that had angry customers hitting the comments section. I had to do a lot of foul language moderation for some brands, but this one was people either complaining or straight up making their own videos about how poor the company's service is.

 

[skate323k137]

I belive it.

"it's 20 degrees here, and I have no heat."

"We're sorry for the inconvenience"

/eyeroll

 

[fake]

The crazy thing is that only half of the complaints were about the actual work done. (They just have "vetted" local contractors go out on their behalf.) The other half was about denial of service, red tape, etc. I don't know about now, but they used to advertise that if they couldn't fix something that was covered, they would replace it. I can't remember a single time an actual customer mentioned that happening. It's hilarious to me that they now have TV ads.

 

[Lagduf]

Sounds like a scam in general, not worth it.

BTW the phone thing is most likely very real. Lot of business are straight up VOIP for their phones (with specific VoIP carriers) and I guess the new ransom hack attack thing to do is DDOS a carrier and basically jam the network so customers can’t make calls. Pay the ransom and they stop the attack.

People are pieces of shit at times.

 

[skate323k137]

It certainly looks like a too good to be true situation. It's sad they get so many people; the overlap between people who need appliance insurance and people who can afford real legal action is likely near nil. I still have no answer as to if they have any real obligation to prevent me from freezing my ass off, which is an academic discussion at this point as my new furnace is purchased.

For better or worse I'm familiar with running voip for a call center. Carrier outages certainly happen, but then you should have reliable capacity on your self service and live chat to remain reachable. We always made sure to run 2 geographical locations for support with accommodations for remote workforce if the DC itself had an issue. Also our voip was behind two on premise ddos protection appliances, so you would have had to saturate basically a whole data centers uplinks to take it out. Possible, but thankfully it never happened.

 

[SpamYouToDeath]

It sounds like a poverty trap. Not to be an asshole about it, but... replacing the hot water / air conditioner / whatever is a pretty predictable cost. It's not huge. I can't imagine wanting insurance for something like that. Just sock away the money every month instead.

 

[skate323k137]

No offense taken. I would agree with the Poverty Trap assessment.

When I bought the place it made sense to have coverage in case too many of those things piled up. I didn't want to rack up more debt especially, because we financed a lot of stuff when we bought the house already. The short of that was because the lenders were dragging out rolling improvement into the loan, and we had purchase agreement deadlines, so we did what we had to do and just mortgaged the house and used credit for what we needed to fix. Add to that I had just bought the house and so had used most of my cash savings for the down payment, I wanted a predictable budget as much as possible. My budget was within my means and I was rebuilding savings, but a major appliance would have hurt back then.

Now that I've paid all that shit off and have taken care of essentially all my debt but the mortgage, there's no reason to get fleeced for this.

Lesson learned; self-insure

 

[skate323k137]

Procured my new furnace last night, scheduled for Tomorrow, and then someone cancelled this morning. So, my new furnace is on the way. AHS wouldn't have even had someone here to check it out yet.

The tech that came out last night lent us some space heaters, so we kept it a nice 58 degrees in here overnight lol

 

[norton9478]

If it is on TV, it is probably a scam.

The more adds they buy on Family Feud, the higher the margins.

Even if these companies work as advertised (meaning they pay out all legitimate claims), you are essentially pre-paying for your repairs. They are designed to almost never pay out substantially more than they take in.

Really, if you are worried about your appliances breaking get a line of credit. It doesn't cost you anything if you don't use it.

 

[norton9478]

I hate furnaces. I will never own one.

My heating system is 50 years old and I can guarantee you that it has never broken down or needed servicing.

 

[Neodogg]

I hate furnaces. I will never own one.

My heating system is 50 years old and I can guarantee you that it has never broken down or needed servicing.

a wood burning stove is nothing to brag about you savage!

 

[skate323k137]

@norton9478 what kind of system? Is it wood burning and how cold does it get where you are? Just curious.

I know insurance companies exist to make money, I've just always used good ones for auto or anything else that paid out when they should. Progressive basically paid me $1000 to total a Rav4 (girl ran a red and T boned me).

At the time it made budgetary sense IF they actually did what they claimed. I have no problem with lines of credit now (or even home equity but I'm sitting on that for a roof eventually).

 

[norton9478]

a wood burning stove is nothing to brag about you savage!

Wood burning stove needs constant maintenance and annual servicing.

I have baseboard electric. No moving parts. No pilot lights. Never breaks down. Never needs refueling. Never needs to be reset. Every room can be set individually.

Note: I am thinking of switching the baseboards out for radiant cove infrareds and a few wall blowers to give me more options on furniture placement. My living room is currently running on less than 1/2 of the baseboards I had when I bought the house.

Average Low here is 40 or less from Oct-April. Below Freezing Nov-Mar.

 

[lithy]

I've had these things on both houses we bought. Realtors seems to love them, I always see 'Home Warranty' in listings.

I never renewed after the included year and even if I thought I had a coverable issue I doubt I would call them, always struck me as the kinda thing that would be more headache to use than it is worth for a $500 refrigerator.

 

[StevenK]

I ordered a book about how people get scammed online - it's been months now, still hasn't turned up.

 

[norton9478]

I know insurance companies exist to make money, I've just always used good ones for auto or anything else that paid out when they should. Progressive basically paid me $1000 to total a Rav4 (girl ran a red and T boned me).

At the time it made budgetary sense IF they actually did what they claimed. I have no problem with lines of credit now (or even home equity but I'm sitting on that for a roof eventually).

Car insurance has probably paid out a net positive to me (or people I have caused damage to) over my lifetime.
Car insurance is heavily regulated and pretty much forced on drivers (by goverment or banks). They have broad, huge policy pools.
-I still hate that they spend SOO MUCH advertising on TV. I don't want the Rogers rate. I want the rate that they could cut me by collectively not spending money on TV advertising.

Extended non-manufacturer warranties are the Wild, Wild Wild Westworld.

 

[norton9478]

I've had these things on both houses we bought. Realtors seems to love them, I always see 'Home Warranty' in listings.

I never renewed after the included year and even if I thought I had a coverable issue I doubt I would call them, always struck me as the kinda thing that would be more headache to use than it is worth for a $500 refrigerator.

Other than a heating system, any appliance in your house can be bought for less than $1000. Even in an absolute pinch you can show up at a rent-to-own place with $50 and get a washer/dryer/refrigerator/stove delivered until you can find something on CL.

 

[skate323k137]

I've had these things on both houses we bought. Realtors seems to love them, I always see 'Home Warranty' in listings.

I never renewed after the included year and even if I thought I had a coverable issue I doubt I would call them, always struck me as the kinda thing that would be more headache to use than it is worth for a $500 refrigerator.

This company already got hit with class action for realtors getting kickbacks

 

[wyo]

Yeah home warranties are BS, skate. Never had a problem with manufacturer or store bought extended warranties on appliances. One time purchase and they tend to pay for themselves with one service call.

 

[norton9478]

I don't get extended warranties either.

Maybe on gifts for people outside of my household if the money is right.

 

[Lagduf]

Reminds of me when they’d offer you a warranty on a compact disc.

Incase it gets scratched.

Fuck off.

 

[Heinz]

I don't bother with warranties, insurance etc on anything other than car and house plus contents. When it comes to appliances if you don't like the idea of relying on shoddy 'insurance' then spend more from the outset and get a better built appliance. I bought an expensive Bosch clothes dryer 10 years ago, had to replace a belt in that time which cost me $40. Maybe a cheaper one would've outright died by now.

 

[skate323k137]

We bought the insurance as "in case shit" because we knew the previous homeowners left an old (but quality, to their credit) furnace and central AC. I think we replaced every other appliance except the microwave when we bought the house with good ones.

I always buy quality shit. My parents were cheap asses and I learned fast.

 

[Tripredacus]

Like when the guy at Gamestop wants to know if I want to buy a warranty on the video games. Like I'm even going to play them or own the system they are for.