Complaint Review: American Home Shield

AHS denied coverage on a 27 year old air conditioning unit by claiming that we had not kept up sufficient maintenance. The unit was in a home which we had purchased three years prior.

Filters had been regularly cleaned and this unit and it's wiring and plumbing were simply old. This is why we bought the policy - to cover old appliance and systems in the home. This is what their advertising pitches.

But when we really did have a failure in an appliance that had a large cost attached - they suddenly pulled out the "fine print" and claimed that it was our responsibility to prove to them we had provided maintenance on this unit every 6 - 12 months.

We asked for a second opinion and they would send only one company - Stewksbury Appliance - one that we had major problems with before on another property. Although AHS had a record of our complaint against stewksbury - they refused to even try to find any other company to offer another opinion.

We have been having 90+ degree days here in tennessee so we regretfully accepted their only source of second opinion - but, we were told it would be three days before they could come.

Our tenents could not sleep in the home without air conditioning so we went ahead and paid $3000. to replace the unit.

The person we got to replace stated that he thought maintenance had been fine and that the unit failed do to it's age. Parts for this unit were impossible to get given it's age and mode.

It is clear to me that AHS takes this hard line and interprets "maintenance" in this way to avoid replacing costly items that the consumer believes will be covered.

The marketing message sent sent by AHS is misleading and is not lived up to in their practices.

I think this company should be exposed for the rip-off that it is. I have other examples I could provide of their methods to mislead and defraud consumers. I have my own home and rental properties and have used AHS for 8 years in Tennessee and 10 years prior in California. I always kept the contracts renewed in spite of poor service and questionable practices because I expected that when I did have a big money item fail - the policy would cover me.

I was wrong.

Susan
Maryville, Tennessee
U.S.A.