Complaint Review: Allied Home Warranty

We used Allied/NRG for the first time in July 2013 after out AC began making a loud noise and freezing up around the back of the outside unit and was not cooling properly.  They sent out a tech who was able to get it going for us.  By the next day, however, it was doing the same thing.  I'm not an AC tech and because their invoices don't have work descriptions, the tech had informed me he direct wired something.  I honestly couldn't tell you what he was talking about.  I didn't care what he did to get it working properly as it was 100 degrees outside and I had an infant at the time. 

The following day (or maybe two days) we started having the same issues.  This time they sent a supervisor out who informed us the evap coil was bad and needed to be replaced.  The home warranty supposedly would cover a portion of it, but we would be liable for nearly $2,000 in repairs as well.  The supervisor also jumped all down my back about the direct wire issue.  He basically "scolded" me telling me it was a severe code violation, et cetera.  When I told him HIS tech from the previous day did it, he basically told me that was his word against mine, he didn't believe that, blah, blah, blah.  But don't you think the tech would have made note of that from the day before???  Whatever. 

So we pay the $2,000, AC works fine, thankfully.

Fast forward to November and our furnace keeps shutting off.  It would only stay on a few minutes and then would shut off.  It was throwing a code, which my husband was able to locate in the manual as either being a bad heat sensor or a bad control board.  Call Allied back, they send out NRG again.  Their tech tells me he can't figure out what's wrong, but more than likely, I'm going to need an entirely new furnace and he's got to get his supervisor out here.  I asked for a price estimate and he told me it'd probably be around $2,000 after Allied paid their portion.

This house is only eight years old.  What are the odds that both the AC AND heat both need major work/replacement within the same year?

In the meantime, my husband replaces the heat sensor and then control board (based on the code that it had been throwing, he figured that was the issue).  Spent $180 in parts and it took him literally 10 minutes to swap them over.  And my husband is in IT, has NO experience working with HVAC systems.  Heater works perfectly fine now. Really makes me wonder what kind of simple solution we could have had over the summer for the AC instead of a $2,000 complete evap coil replacement.

I can't help but wonder if they did something to the control board while they were up there over the summer working on the AC.  I'm probably being overly paranoid, but I've seen other reviews where people have found evidence of sabotage. 

I'd advise anyone looking for a home warranty to RUN, RUN, RUN the other way.  DO NOT use Allied!!