Beware Of What Your Home Warranty Doesn’t Cover
I am typically a fan of having a home warranty. My home is around 11 years old and things are beginning to need repair. Therefore, paying around $425 a year for a warranty to be covered is worth it for the most part.
This past Sunday (it is now Wednesday), I noticed a pool of water in my laundry room. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from so we immediately called our home warranty company to send out a tech. Within a few hours someone was there to let us know that our hot water heater needed a funeral and that they would be back on Tuesday to fix it.
After having no hot water for 2.5 days, the tech showed up letting us know that we also needed a permit and an expansion tank to satisfy Loudoun County regulations. Since the hot water heater replacement was being covered by the home warranty my ONLY charges would be him moving a pipe, adding an expansion tank, permit fee’s, and haul away fee’s equaling almost $700 out of pocket!
It turned out that this company couldn’t do the work, so the warranty company called someone else to re-diagnose the issue, giving me more time off of work and more cold water. Fun. These guys had additional charges adding up to over $600 outside of the warranty. They were not too happy when I called the county to find out that what they were sharing was bogus!
Since I currently did not have an expansion tank, I didn’t need one. I also didn’t need flex piping. I was going to pay their $150 fee for a haul away when I can find someone on craigslist to do it for $50.
The moral of the story is to verify what your county truly requires when a contractor says you “must” have something done. It just saved me $600.
photo credit- flickr johncarljohnson
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Great post, Jon!
Thanks Ed for stopping by. I just got back my hot water this morning.