Home Warranties - American Home Shield

 People have a lot of negative feelings about home warranties.  Many view them as the extended protection plan of home buying.  Either we've just been lucky in who we've dealt with, or American Home Shield actually has a good warranty.

When we bought our home 4 years ago it came with appliances and AC that were each well over a decade old, so we made sure that the purchase contract included the sellers providing a year of home warranty coverage.  We kept our fingers crossed that things would fail in that year so we could have them replaced.  Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, nothing failed in year one.  When the year came to an end we had to decide whether to keep coverage or let it lapse.  Since the appliances were only getting older we decided to keep it.

Luckily for us, that turned out to be a good decision because we soon had our dishwasher break down and developed a leak from the unnecessarily massive 50-gallon hot-water heater.  Having those issues addressed was as easy as making a request for service through the website and waiting for the repair company to show up.  We didn't have any problems with timely responses from the contracted companies--they worked us into their schedules and were out within a few days.

The dishwasher repair required parts that were on months-long backorder (this was the beginning of COVID), and we weren't fond of that dishwasher in the first place, so we took the buyout option where American Home Shield gave us roughly the cost they would have paid in parts & labor for the repair so we could buy a new dishwasher.  That turned out to be a great decision.  This makes me feel old and boring to say, but that dishwasher upgrade has been such an incredible quality of life improvement.  We went from a loud old GE with minimal space inside to a high-end, ultra quiet, KitchenAide that can fit  most of our dishware!

We had hoped that replacing the hot water heater could have been accomplished by substituting in a tankless heater since it is much more efficient--both for energy and space.  Unfortunately, that wasn't an option (and we didn't look into a buyout scenario) because their policy was to replace components with the same thing. So we're still stuck with a massive heater that we don't need...but at least it doesn't leak and was addressed promptly.

We've also taken advantage of some of their service promotions--specifically the AC tune up.  Living in Phoenix it seemed like a good thing to do.  Again, service was prompt.  And the guy who came out spotted a few minor issues that were making the system less efficient.  They were quick repairs that he went ahead and performed on the spot.

There were also two plumbing issues we've had resolved through AHS providers.  Both of them were basically caused by the hard water here ruining worm-thread water shutoff valves, which then had to be cut off.  I consider myself very handy, but most plumbing work is beyond what I'm comfortable attempting since a job done poorly can mean a flooded house.  Again, getting them fixed was as easy as requesting service through the website.

We're going on 4 years in this house and have maintained the warranty since its expiration.  Honestly, we might still be losing money on it--but because we still have a lot of the old appliances, pipes, wiring, etc., we've decided it's worth keeping for peace of mind that we'll be taken care of if things go bad.  And spread out over monthly payments at least makes the cost feel insignificant.

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