AMERICAN HOME SHIELD IS A JOKE

American Home Shield, IS A JOKE.

Well if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. My partner asked me if I was starting to feel like I bought a lemon with this old house. I am starting to wonder it that isn’t true. The same phrase bears repeating, ‘but it’s an old house, things are outdated and always need attending to in an older home.’ I believe it is a tradeoff. I get the charm of an older home, established trees, and lots of windows. The trade is, with the established trees, I get tree roots invading the old terra cotta (or clay) sewer line that the previous owner failed to deal with. I get weird wiring in the electrical panel, like too many things on one circuit. At least the windows are new all around!

Let me get to the title of this “essay.”

AMERICAN HOME SHIELD is a rip – off. If you are buying a house, don’t waster your money. I have dealt with the same company on two different houses and never had a good experience. The first house, sewer issue. It was old, had a clay main sewer line, the standard for the ‘day,’ which in this case, was the 1940’s. I used American Home Shield to come out and clean out the sewer line after living in that old house (the one I left in SF), but any subsequent clean outs were not going to be covered. That means, if I had to call out American Home Shield, they would not cover the cost for the service charge, which, by the way, was quite a lot less than the current charge of $45. The old service charge, if I can remember, was about $30.

After living here, in Sacramento in the house I bought, for two weeks, the sewer line from the shower developed a stoppage. That was it, nothing would drain. My earlier rant about the prior owner knowing about the sewer only touches on my frustration. On top of that, it is the expense. When I bought the house, the prior owner, Nancy Sanchez, and I split the home warranty insurance. That’s about $450.00 each. I called American Home Shield to get service on this problem. First complaint is the phone log-in, it takes forever and you have to deal with a complicated menu. I guess that cuts down on overhead when you don’t have a person to talk to. Ok, so I expect to get a call from a “technician” some time soon. Technician is the new name for a plumber, or an electrician. A plumbing company calls and will send some one in two days. I have to arrange for showering at a friend’s house. When the plumbing company calls my partner is home and, as I had done with American Home Shield, explained that there is a stoppage in the bathroom, specifically, the bathtub will not drain. The plumber shows up and complains that he did not know it was a stoppage problem and he doesn’t have the right equipment. He leaves to get the equipment and comes back about 3 hours later. Not knowing the only problem we specified does not inspire a lot of confidence, we should have asked what he was told to fix.

The plumbing ‘technician’ find a clean-out opening and snaked the sewer line from that point to the street. This was totally outside of the confines of the house. The stoppage did not clear; gee could it be that the stoppage was between the shower drain and the outside sewer line? Why yes, that makes sense, doesn’t it? And what did the technician say? Oh, he can’t snake that, the service is only for the outside sewer line snake. He can’t get on the roof, he can’t send a snake down the exhaust pipe (whatever that thing is on the roof). The technician said that the bathtub is backing up because it is the lowest point and, pretty much, he did all he can do. He recommended calling another plumber with a camera to see where the problem is.

What, call a real plumber? Is that the answer? Apparently so, as my partner had a plumber out in an hour, as I called the city to come and find the street clean out. The very next morning, the real plumber ran a camera down the exhaust on the roof and guess what he found? A stoppage RIGHT AFTER THE SHOWER DRAIN, just where we asked the first plumber to check. That stoppage was cleared, as was another small one beyond that. Unfortunately, there will need to be a sewer replacement in my future and it will be costly.

My conversation with American Home Shield that next night was along the lines of, what the heck do you cover? I got this out of it: American Home Shield’s plumbers will snake out the main sewer line only. There is no replacement of plumbing, outside of the boundaries of the house, covered. Yet the specific stoppage was within the boundaries of the house, the service does not allow for clearing it. That is pretty stupid. You know what that means to me? Just get a “real” plumber whenever you need anything plumbing related, because all you will get is a main sewer line snake-out for $45 with American Home Shield.

Joke number two, and part of my first sentence, if it isn’t one thing it is another, is the electrical outage I experienced on Saturday. Naturally it happened on a weekend, ensuring the maximum of costs to me, the new homeowner. I call a couple of electricians and left messages. I called only the ones that advertised in the yellow pages that they were 24/7 operations. There must be a lot of work for electricians, as everyone was out and would call me back, strange, though, no one did. After about an hour, I remembered this issue might be covered by my American Home Shield warranty. I called and dealt with the electronic recording menu and finally got a phone number for an electrician. It was a 530 area code and the mechanical voice told me that a technician would call on Monday to arrange service. Since I had NO LIGHTS, NO REFRIGERATOR and nothing but a few outlets worked, most of them in the bathroom, this was not a satisfactory service. I had to repeat “operator” over and over at the phone until a real live person at the American Home Shield call center answered. When I said Monday would not do, that I considered my issue more of an emergency, the young man said he would consult his supervisor. I waited on hold for a few minutes, and when the young man came back on line, he said my electrical problem was not an emergency and that I could run an extension cord to an operating outlet for my refrigerator.

I admit this last thing was just too much for my already frustrated and stressed emotional state. Although I did not swear, I said something like ‘you’ve got to be kidding me. You are suggesting I run an extension cord? American Home Shield is a joke. The service for the sewer is just like this electrical problem.’ Then I just hung up before I got into screaming at the kid answering the phone. It isn’t his fault he works for a JOKE. You know what I want? I want my $400 bucks back. Because I have paid $45 for a service call from a plumbing company that only snaked the main sewer (hey, I suppose that was a bargain, it needed doing). I paid $325 for the camera work from a real plumber and $275 for the electrician who came out Saturday evening and took care of my problem.

I guess my karma is running backward for now. I used to say I’ve been living right because I had relatively good luck. This is the bad luck.