Readers share their nightmares of working with home warranty
Ipreviously shared the story of Wilma Clark of Plano who went without air conditioning for 39 days during this hottest of hot summers.
Hers was a cautionary tale about the dangers of signing up for a home warranty repair company in an industry perceived as looking for the cheapest way possible to make fixes.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, something is rotten in Florida-based Cinch Home Warranty.
A Cinch representative disagrees, telling The Watchdog in a written statement, “The safety of our customers is our top priority.”
Two more North Texans have come forward with “if you think that was bad wait until you hear what Cinch did to me” stories. The stories I’ll share are almost blood-curdling in the pain these customers say the company caused them. These stories make you feel grateful you’re not stuck in the same Twilight Zone.
Having studied three cases, a pattern emerges among them. If it’s broken, Cinch may say they don’t cover it. But if they do, a repair person arrives and sometimes recommends a full replacement of whatever appliance or system is down. But up the Cinch chain of command, a manager may veto that and seek to find a less expensive way to repair.
This could lead to a delay in finding a needed part, and sometimes the tech shows up with the wrong part.
Then the customer goes into a long slide of no electricity in their house or, as in these cases, no air conditioning for weeks and weeks in the hot summer.
The customer may be told to pay an exorbitant amount for the repair that isn’t covered in the home warranty contract.
Oh, and the company doesn’t seem to care.
NO AIR CONDITIONING
If this were the Olympics of bad home warranty plans, my two subjects are both gold medalists.
Problems for the Baumans of Oak Cliff began when a tech showed up to check their air conditioning and blew up their breaker box with sparks a flying, Stevette Bauman told me.
The whole house lost electricity, and along with it, their A/C, she said.
An A/C repair call suddenly became an electrician’s problem. Unfortunately, the home’s breaker box was in a bedroom closet, not permissible under modern city code.
To move it and repair the A/C would cost $6,500. The whole point of a good warranty company is that you may be able to avoid a big bill like that. But not everything in a home is covered.
The family bought two portable air conditioners for a thousand dollars. They couldn’t use their pool this summer with their grand kids because they couldn’t run the pool pump. Their pool is green, and half-drained from the summer heat.
They lost food in their refrigerator, couldn’t use their computer or their television.
As of this writing, the family has been without A/C for 78 days.
The holdup is that Bauman says she doesn’t want to pay $6,500 when she originally was quoted $2,500.
A company representative gave The Watchdog a written statement that states the breaker box was outdated and failed.
“Following the service request for the Baumans’ HVAC unit in late July, the technicians discovered that the unit could not be diagnosed due to a failing and outdated electrical panel,” the statement said.
“We continued to work with the homeowner to resolve the claim and sent electricians to the home. They both reported that the main electrical panel, estimated to be 40 years old, was overheating and not repairable. Both service experts informed the homeowners that to properly meet the electrical code requirements, the panel would need to be replaced, rewired and relocated to an exterior or garage wall . ...
“We explained to the customer that the panel replacement was approved, but the relocation and all associated costs to bring it up to code are the homeowner’s responsibility.”
Cinch says it “will continue working directly with the homeowners on the resolution of their choice.” Once the Baumans approve repair and rewiring and get that done, Cinch will work on the A/C, it said.
CLAIMS NUMBERS DON’T ADD UP
The good news for customer Preston Silvey of Plano is that Cinch replaced his water heater and fixed his garage door.
The bad news is that Cinch tossed him around with his floor leak, his refrigerator, his oven and his A/C unit, which, of course, he lost for a month during summer 2022.
“Everyone agreed that the A/C should be replaced except the manager,” he recalls. He paid $800 for a compressor that didn’t work.
The water leak wasn’t covered.
Six different techs came by to try and fix his refrigerator. Finally, he gave up and bought a new one.
When his oven broke, five techs tried to fix it, but nobody could find the right part. Cinch offered a replacement oven, but it didn’t fit the space and size of the original oven. Instead, he took a buyout from Cinch and received $650 to help pay for a replacement he bought on his own.
“They weren’t as responsive as I would have preferred,” he says. “I would not recommend them to anybody.”
Cinch told me that Silvey made 24 claims in 11 years. “During that time, we resolved 24 claims for him. We acknowledge there were some delays in some claims, and while some were caused by industry-wide parts and appliance shortages during the pandemic, any delay is not consistent with our high standards for customer service.”
Silvey responds: “It’s interesting that they considered a recurring issue of the refrigerator to be something that they would count in their number of claims resolved.”