Buyer Beware: Choice Home Warranty
We purchased a home warranty with Choice Home Warranty in 7/08 when we bought our new home. It took them 9 months to get my e-mail address correct on the account so I could actually log in, but that’s beside this point.
Our washing machine was giving us trouble so we put in a claim 6/6/09 and for some odd reason Andyagreed to renew our contract through 7/17/10 while we were dealing with the claim. Choice Home Warranty sent a service person and we paid $45 for a service call. However, their person was unable to fix our washer and we were instructed to find our own repairperson and Choice Home Warranty would process the claim, paying the difference after we paid the $45 for the service call.
Guess what happened?
When the new service person came out Choice Home Warranty would not respond to our calls or process the claim so we had to pay the repairman out of our pocket, which was $79.50. We continued to call Choice Home Warranty multiple times to finish the claim and get our refund. It would take multiple calls and several minutes to just reach a person but each time that person said they were unable to help us and they would have a manager or someone who could complete the claim call us back. We have never been contacted and nothing has been fixed or processed.
Can you imagine how ANNOYED that made me?
Due to the extremely poor customer service we decided we no longer wished to continue the service. I sent a letter on 7/13/09 with an explanation and requested a refund of the renewal charges. We had already spent $130 on the claim between two different service calls and the problem has not been resolved; we cannot get anyone from Choice Home Warranty to process the claim or even return our calls. I saw the claim was marked as “closed” online but we continue to deal with this issue as it has not been settled, our washing machine has not been fixed, and we have not been reimbursed for having to find our own repairperson.
Today I received a letter stating that we only had 3 days after renewing our contract to cancel it for a refund and therefore, our service will remain in tact for another year. Not only that, but the letter when on about how important it is to provide great customer service. WHAT? Considering we cannot get them to actually SERVICE our claims WHAT IS THE POINT??? We still want to cancel and receive a refund as we will not be using the service simply because they will not follow through with their end of the deal. Idiots!
Ugh I am so mad!
I immediately filed a claim with the Better Business Bureau and with Discover since we paid for the renewal through them. Hopefully someone somewhere can help us with this stupidity. It has taken 2 freaking months and over $400 out of our pocket and the darn washing machine STILL doesn’t work right. But, I guess we can rest assured the CHW has us covered SCAMMED for another year.
Have you ever had a similar experience? What did you do? Was it resolved to your satisfaction? Is there anything else we can/should do?
Oh no… that’s terrible. We never splurge for the warranties for almost anything, because it seems that this is usually what happens. I think you went the right direction to report them to the BBB and Discover. I hope they can get you reimbursed. If the company was smart, they would just let you cancel to avoid the hassle.
I’m sorry you have to go through all this crap.
Dear Mrs. Meckley,
The details of these situations are not representative of the normal CHW customer experience and we sincerely regret our customers’ frustration and discomfort.
We are grateful to receive this feedback, and want to work with you to reach a resolution.
We are committed to providing a positive customer experience and doing the right thing for all our customers, contractors and employees. We take customer feedback very seriously. Among other things, it’s an important component in how we rate our contractors.
Given the details of these situations, CHW is currently conducting a thorough review of all of the contributing factors to the service delays and the contracted professionals that have worked on these service work orders. We will make quality-assurance decisions after the review is complete.
At Choice Home Warranty, our focus is on quality… providing quality home-warranty products to our customers, following up with quality customer service when our homeowners contact us, building quality business relationships with our contractors, and ensuring quality work from our contracted technicians. We do not and have not ever encouraged contractors to deny customer claims.
In addition to evaluating customer feedback, we continually evaluate our contractors’ performance, responsiveness, cost, and other factors to ensure these partnerships are fair and beneficial to all parties involved: our customers, our contractors, and our company.
CHW has an entire department devoted to recruiting, training, monitoring and consulting the contracted professionals we use to service our warranty work. We have a dedicated contractor-relations representative for each market—this allows CHW to closely manage our relationships with contractors and it provides each of our contractors with a single point of contact at CHW.
We continually work to deliver value to our customers in every aspect of our business, and as a result, our renewal rate is among the highest in the industry.
Please contact me at jmoss[at]choicehomewarranty.com to assist you in resolution.
Thank you,
James Moss | President
Choice Home Warranty
Mr. Moss,
Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my post regarding our difficult experiences with CHW. I would very much like to resolve this issue. That being said, to be quite honest the only acceptable resolution in my mind at this point is to refund us our full renewal amount and we would be willing to forgo the additional expense of the service calls and call it even…why should we pay for an additional year of your service when we have seen the kind of service we get? Truthfully, the amount of time and money we have spent on this one little issue could have paid for a new appliance altogether. You can bet your bottom dollar I will buy a new appliance or call another serviceperson on my own before I attempt to put another claim in through CHW whether we get a refund or not. Sure CHW will get to pocket the money for services they won’t have to provide, but is it really worth it in the greater scheme of things? From a business perspective I should think not.
As I mentioned, we have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and your representative handling the claim (Troy) said CHW was in compliance but he would consider reimbursing us for our additional expenses (if we can provide receipts). However, he would not consider cancelling and refunding the new service contract because we did not cancel within the 3-day cancellation period and your policy is such that you will not cancel contracts mid-term unless both parties agree. I understand that we did not cancel within the 3-day period, this much is true, but we requested the cancellation due to the circumstances weeks prior to the expiration. Furthermore, we DID provide a copy of the receipt with my original letter. Somehow I knew I should have sent that letter registered mail just so I could prove we sent one at all. Of course I can send another copy of the receipt. But how many copies must I provide before CHW acknowledges it? Likewise, we have made SEVERAL calls…in fact I could dig up all our old phone records so I can provide a copy of those too, just so I can prove how many times we tried to call in, the time we spent during those calls, and how few times we were called back. I don’t know what upsets me more…that CHW reps have given us such a runaround, or that their responses make us feel that CHW thinks we’re lying!
Mr. Moss, my husband and I are not unreasonable, dishonest people making ridiculous demands. On the contrary, we are recent MBA graduates who believe this is a perfect example for a management class. In fact, we have been discussing this situation with other MBA students who agree that this is NOT how a company who so highly prides themselves on excellent customer service is expected to respond to a customer complaint; Rather than CHW representatives trying to prove us wrong and nit-pick every detail, this should be a great opportunity for your company to really listen to a disgruntled customer and turn it into a learning/training experience for its employees and ideally, a more positive experience for us. At the very least CHW should consider reviewing the workflow for processing claims in which an outside service company is used. We were told verbally by a CHW rep that we needed an authorization number before submitting the paperwork, while Troy, the other CHW rep, is stating they need the paperwork before they will process the claim. The root of the entire problem is that we were unable to get through to the necessary CHW contacts that could authorize the service call and provide the authorization number for the paperwork we were to submit to CHW; either no one answered the line, our call was dropped, or they kept telling us they would have someone call back and to date no one has.
Again, I appreciate and commend you on taking the time to respond on our blog. I would kindly ask one final time that CHW cancel our latest annual contract and refund us the full renewal amount. In return we will absorb the extra money we spent on the service calls and I would be more than happy to post a follow up on our blog and other social media outlets about how CHW came through and was finally able to provide the type of customer service we expected. Mr. Moss, this will be my last request…we have spent entirely too much time chasing this issue already and if the President of the company is unable to help me I don’t know what more I can do; If CHW is truly unwilling to refund our money or wants to continue to run us in circles asking for more copies of receipts, details or more proof then the company must need the $344 more than we do.
Sincerely,
Laura Meckley
Mrs. Meckley,
We will fulfill your request and refund the $344.00. The refund will be processed within 10 days. Please note that your particular situation was not representative of the kind of services we provide at CHW, and apologize for any inconveniences this has caused you. Please let me know if I may be of any other assistance.
Thank you,
James Moss | President
Choice Home Warranty
visit my blog @ blog.choicehomewarranty.com
Well Choice Home Warranty…is the check still in the mail? Because it’s been 10+ days and we haven’t heard a peep from you since.
Update: We got the refund! Thank you for your help Mr. Moss.
http://themeckleys.com/blog/2009/10/update-choice-home-warranty-makes-good-on-promise/
We have warnings posted all over our site that you should research CHOICE HOME Warranty before you do business with them. There are over 500 complaints on the INTERNET against them. Over 59 at BBB. They are a scam
Yes, I agree that people should do research ahead of time. We were lucky to have our issue resolved (for the most part.)
We filed a claim 12-5-2009 because our heater went out. Long story short they denied our claim because they said the unit was not \’properly maintained\’ because we did not have any documentation to send them showing that the system had be serviced every season since we owned the house. The system is 25 years old! Obviously it has been maintained or else it would not have lasted this long. I am an MBA and my husband is a PhD, we keep excellent records/receipts for everything in our home, but never once have we heard of \’seasonal maintenance\’ for a heating system. We are tired of insurance/warranty companies taking our money and not performing the service when we need it. We have paid $500 in premiums/service fees during the 4 months we have had this warranty, and they told us that since we do not have a \’long enough history\’ with them they need all of our maintenance records for the heating system (which is just their way of finding a reason to deny the c
laim). We sent them 2 years worth of service receipts to show the repairs that had been made to the system and they said that was not enough, and that we only sent them documentation for when the system broke, not documentation for how we maintained the system. What is the point of buying a warranty if they are not going to fix items when they break? To add insult to injury the weather is 20 degrees which constitutes emergency service, but after 4 days we still have no heat! We have only had this warranty 4 months and Choice Home Warranty has already breached the contract by not performing emergency service. We filed a complaint with the BBB requesting our heat be fixed or our $500 premium/service fees refunded and this warranty cancelled so we can find a reputable company that will actually perform the service we are paying for!
Mr. & Mrs. Woods I am so sorry to hear you are having problems, especially as you said in this weather which mandates emergency service. I hope you are able to resolve your issue sooner than later. It is unfortunate that even the most organized consumers have to go through all that run around and still have issues with your claim.
If you haven’t already, I would contact Mr. Moss as he was the only one who was able to get anything done for us.
Good luck!